


outfielder

by bygoneboy



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Angst, Bad Decisions, Baseball, F/M, Forgiveness, M/M, PTSD, Reconciliation, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/pseuds/bygoneboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-RE6. </p><p>Chris Redfield is alive, but not by much, and coping with the fact that instead of killing him, the C-Virus has adapted and thrived inside of Piers Nivans' body.</p><p>Piers Nivans is alive, but not by much, and coping with the fact that instead of recognizing his dying wish, Chris Redfield has thrown away his life.</p><p>Wondering what makes a guy human is one thing they  have in common. And through a few arguments, a few drinks, and a lot of catch, they both learn to forgive, forget, and play ball.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know. Piers' resurrection has been done before, and often. But Chris's campaign broke my fucking heart, and this is my way of putting it back together again. 
> 
> Plus, baseball is the fix for anything. <3

Sherry volunteers to go.

It has to be her. Sherry knows Claire and Claire is Chris’s sister and Leon says that Chris will respond best in the most comfortable situation possible and she’s going and she _volunteered,_ damn it, so why does she feel so uncertain?

She glances at the hallway mirror as she tugs her fingers into her gloves. Her face is paler than usual and she narrows her eyes at her reflection, her mouth narrowing in what is meant to be a hard, determined line.

It looks more like a grimace.

“You’re going,” she tells herself loudly, turning face the mirror fully and putting her hands on her hips. “It’s decided; you’re going.”

She hears his chuckle from the other room, soft and mocking. He clicks the door open and slouches around the corner, grinning at her.

“Having second thoughts?”

Her bottom lip sticks out when she's irritated and it's sticking out now. “Jake Muller, you shut your mouth.”

“Whatever you say, supergirl.” He trudges into the hall, doing his best to look casual. But she can see him fidgeting, seeing her ready to go in her coat and boots, and he looks uncomfortable for just a second. “You got my number, right? You’re gonna call if you get in any trouble?”

“There won’t be any trouble,” Sherry says, exasperated. “But of course I’ll call,” she adds quickly, seeing his expression. “Just…don’t worry about me.”

“I wasn’t.” Jake brushes some invisible lint off of his shoulder and half-shrugs, trying to play it tough even though they both know that she’s always been able to see through his façade.

He coughs. “You gonna get going now, or what?”

“Yeah,” she says, putting a hand on his chest and standing on her tip-toes to kiss him on the cheek.

He elbows her away and growls something she can’t quite make out, but it’s worth it to see the goofy look on his face.

He’s really not very good at this dating stuff.

\-----------------------

Chris is nursing his third beer when someone rings the doorbell.

It’s a loud, obnoxious buzz that shoots straight through his temple, and he reminds himself to bust the thing apart when he gets rid of whatever salesperson is standing outside. Setting his beer down and dragging his heels off the table and onto the carpet, he gets to his feet, listening to the pop and crack of joints that haven’t moved in far too long.

The doorbell buzzes again; Chris swears foully and repeatedly, striding across the room. He’s still spitting the curses out as he swings the door open, which is how “fuck you,” comes to be the first thing that Chris Redfield says to Sherry Birkin that day. 

She looks up at him, so much shorter but somehow steadier than the war-scarred Captain in front of her, and brushes a blond strand of hair out of her eyes, unflinching. She’s been greeted with worse, after all. And she's a tough girl; everyone knows that.

 _“Sherry,”_ says Chris, eyes widening in surprise.

“Chris,” says Sherry, her mouth twisting as she looks him over.

His shirt is buttoned crookedly and it looks like he hasn’t shaved in at least two weeks. He’s barefoot, with his eyes bleary with sleep, and, after taking a hesitant sniff and suppressing a recoil, she wonders how long it’s been since he’s taken a shower.

A quick observation of the apartment behind him reveals quite an abundance of alcohol. Sherry frowns.

“Are you drunk?” she asks, her gaze returning to rest on him, eyes bright and expression keen. “Because if you are, I’m going to have to wait for you to come to your senses before I relay any information.”

He grunts, brow creasing. “Information? I…no, I’m sober. Didn’t even finish my third bottle.”

Her mouth pops into an _o_ of surprise before she remembers how much big he is. Size alters resilience. Give Chris five beers and he’d have to blink a little to steady himself; give her one sizable shotglass and she’d already feel woozy.

“Okay,” she says, still scanning his face suspiciously. But his expression is clear and she’s pretty sure he’s telling the truth, and she folds her arms across her chest and waits in deliberation. “So. Are you going to invite me in, or should we just stand out here and freeze?"

Chris shakes his head and laughs without humor. But at least he’s _trying_ to be normal; Leon had told her to be prepared for anything, from a depressed Chris to a mentally unstable one.

With the possibilities of what she could've met at the door, she's relieved to see the depressed one. Maybe that only goes to show how low they've all sunk, and how desperate. 

"You want a drink?"

Sherry looks over and sees him rummaging through cabinets, the clinking of bottles echoing through the desolate apartment. 

"Brandy? Whiskey?" He peers through his seemingly endless supply; she wonders how long it's taken him to build up the stock. "Lager? But you know, I could've sworn that I've got a good old Miller Light in here, somewhere." 

She's not listening, but trailing through the apartment instead. It's a decent enough place, with an open kitchen leading straight into the living room. There's a short hallway and two doors across from one another: one to the bedroom, she assumes, and the other to the bathroom. 

Chris has enough in his retirement fund to live more than comfortably, but it doesn't look like he's taken advantage of the money. The carpet is stained and the counters are thick with dust; the only furniture is the furnishing in the kitchen, the couch in the living room, and a few chairs and other fixtures scattered around the place. She can only imagine what his own room is like: bare, probably, other than a bed and a side table. 

She notices a baseball glove resting on one of the cushions and picks it up, turning it over in her hands. "Didn't know you played," she says.

Chris's head pops up from the cabinet for a moment and he grimaces before ducking down again. "Used to. Not anymore."

He doesn't tell her that he'd been offered a scholarship his senior year of high school- one that he'd turned down in favor of the Air Force, STARS, and eventually, the BSAA. 

He'd been team captain. 

_Captain._

But back then, he hadn't had to worry about leaving men behind. They were always on the field, right where they were supposed to be, when he went to look. Now, no one is where they're supposed to be. Him most of all.

He doesn't tell her that, either.

Sherry strokes the leather, unable to know the thoughts running through his head. He's got _Redfield_ inscribed on the side of the glove in silver. "'Not anymore?'" she echoes. "Why not?"

"I...well, who the fuck would I throw to?" Chris asks, voice small and, for the first time, a little lonely. 

There's a lingering, bitter silence, then. It grows until he can't stand it, turning back to the cabinet, attempting to lighten his voice and trying not to think too much about anything. 

"Oh, hey- I _knew_ I had that Miller." He picks out one bottle among the many and sits back on his heels, rolling it across his palms. "You want that drink or not?"

She sets down the glove abruptly. "Chris," she says softly, with the tone she uses whenever Jake gets upset. "I'm going to tell you something, and you have to promise me to stay calm."

He raises his head again. Wary, this time.

"Shoot," he says, and she takes a few uncertain steps and leans over the counter, looking him full in the face. 

"We've got a location on Piers Nivans," she says quietly.

The bottle slips through his fingers and crashes to the floor, burying barbs of glass in his skin the way Sherry's words have.

"Fuck," says Chris. But he's not talking about the mess.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris and Sherry talk about a lot of stuff, and head over to the hospital.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Chris. Everyone needs a Sherry in their life. Or a Piers. Most preferably both.

“Sorry,” says Chris for the tenth time.

A piece of glass drops onto the plate, staining the area around it with red. Sherry doesn’t even pause, holding the tweezers deliberately and pressing her fingers gently against his arm. The rubber gloves are cold against his skin and the metal of the tweezers are colder.  

“It’s all right,” she says for the tenth time.

Chris winces as she finds and removes another glass shard. “Jeeze,” he mutters. “You’re sure calm about all of this.”

She cracks a small smile at that, her eyes brightening. “Chris, I live with _Jake._ He can’t keep himself out of trouble for three days.”

Chris feels disappointment well up inside of him. “He’s still working as a mercenary, then? I…I’d kinda hoped the kid had given it up.”

Sherry shakes her head. “That’s not what I meant,” she says apologetically, letting out a soft laugh. “He did give it up. But even if he’s not looking for trouble, trouble is always looking for him.” There’s a _clink_ as she draws another glass piece out of his arm and onto the plate. “He burned himself on the stove yesterday morning. And a couple of days before that I found him trying to get his toast out of the toaster with a metal fork.”

She’s giggling and even Chris has to chuckle at that. It’s easier to laugh, now.

One, last glass shard clatters onto the plate. Blood wells up on Chris’s arm and Sherry swabs at it with a cotton ball. “Looks like we’re all done,” she says, still smiling. “Let’s get this wrapped up, okay?”

When Chris’s arm is bandaged she helps him sweep up the remaining glass still on the floor, and then tells Chris to lie down in the living room while she mops up the spilled beer.

Sherry’s a great kid, thinks Chris, and he hopes that Wesker’s son knows. _Jake._ He hopes _Jake_ knows. Being Wesker’s son doesn’t make him Wesker, Chris has to remind himself.

Still, Sherry deserves someone her equal. Or at least someone who tries just as hard.

“I thought you flew back to the U.S. after China,” he calls, tipping his head back against the couch.

“I did,” Sherry responds, rinsing out the wet cloth in the sink. “And Jake kept in correspondence for a while, until I got him a VISA, a passport, and clearance from the U.S. government for his immigration. He was taking too long.”

“What,” Chris asks, “unwilling to commit?”

“Probably just nervous,” Sherry answers, amused. “He isn’t as tough as he’d like to think. But don’t tell him I told you, or he’ll sulk for weeks.”

She wrings out the cloth and puts it back under the sinks, wiping her hands off on her jeans. “Hey,” she says, sitting down next to him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She’s so straightforward that for a few seconds, Chris doesn’t even know what she’s talking about.

“About China,” she clarifies at his bewilderment. “And Piers?”

It’s like watching a balloon deflate, she thinks, whenever his name is mentioned. His shoulders tighten and sink down, his head bowing as the air is sucked out of him. “Chris?” she asks gently, touching his shoulder. “You don’t have to.”

 _“As long as you-”_ Piers had said, voice rasping in the back of his throat and shudders racking his body, and to this day Chris wishes he hadn’t cut him off.

_“I don’t want to hear it! You’re gonna be fine. All right?”_

Piers had nodded, then, and Chris wonders if the sniper had actually believed him, or if he’d already been thinking of a way to leave himself behind.

 _“PIERS!”_ Chris had bellowed, fists ramming against the glass of the escape pod, but Piers had only shaken his head and smiled. Had only pushed the lever down and pushed Chris to safety, without a warning and without an apology.

He hadn’t even said good-bye.

“Chris?” Sherry asks. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, raising his head. She doesn’t believe him and he hesitates to try and make her. He can see Claire in her; lying doesn’t work with his sister and it won’t with Sherry, either.

She squeezes his arm, and even though her fingers can’t even wrap halfway around his bicep, the gesture is nice. “Do you want to ask me anything?”

“No.” Sherry gives him a look. “Yeah. How…how long has it been?”

“Piers was found two weeks ago,” she tells him. “He’s been in an intensive care unit from day one.”

“And his condition?”

“Stable. They’ve been working on him 24/7.”

Chris exhales. With relief? Exhaustion? Sherry can’t tell. “How long till he’s out?” he wants to know. “Who’s gonna take care of him? What does he look like? Does he remember anything- is there any brain damage?”

Sherry speaks slowly, taking the questions one at a time; her hand finds and tightens over his in the process. “It hasn’t been determined whether he’s going to be released at all. He may have to live in a designated, uncontaminated shelter for the rest of his life- but nothing’s for sure, at this point,” she adds as Chris’s face creases in worry. “If they let him out, I’ve been granted permission to care for him; he’ll be in good hands.”

“Thank you,” Chris murmurs, but Sherry shakes her head.

“Chris, he looks…he doesn’t look good.”

He raises his head to look at her.

“They couldn’t save the arm,” Sherry says quietly. “But they left it on. They wanted his opinion, before they did anything. He’s still on the anesthesia, though; he’s not strong enough to fully regain consciousness and he’s not strong enough to deal with that sort of thing, not yet. His brain doesn’t seem to have retained any damage. Still, that’s another thing that they’ll have to wait to be confirmed.

“Huh.” Chris rubs the side of his jaw with one hand; his other is still trapped underneath Sherry’s. “I guess…what I’m really wondering, is how the fuck he’s alive. I mean…I saw the damn thing explode.”

Sherry gives a little shrug. “Chinese fishermen picked him up just off of the coast,” she says. “He wasn’t conscious, thank god, or he might’ve hurt someone. The virus formed some kind of solution around his entire body, and apparently that’s what preserved him; the fishermen delivered him to a hospital, but the doctors were too afraid to treat him and went to the Chinese government instead. The Chinese government kept him under anesthesia and contacted the U.S. government after drawing blood samples, the U.S. government contacted the B.S.A.A. after the conclusion that he wasn’t a bioterrorist’s weapon…and now we’re here. How he survived the explosion is up in the air. One theory is that the water pressure swept him out of the facility before the blast hit, but no one really knows.”

Chris sits back, chewing on his bottom lip. “Huh,” he says again.

“There’s a lot we don’t know, Chris,” Sherry admits. “Don’t think about any of it too hard.”

It’s easy for her to say- she’d never really known Piers- and she gets that. But saying it seems to help, because Chris slides his hand out from under hers and gives her a little nod before opening his mouth, words coming hesitantly.

“Do you think…do you think it’d be okay, if I went back to the hospital with you?”

Sherry smiles at him. “I think that’d be great, Chris. You wouldn’t be allowed into the room just yet- not without a thorough background check and a full body suit- but one of the walls serves as a window, and you’re free to look on from there.”

He looks a little happier, then, in a somehow still-morose way, and her smile widens as she notices. “He’s an idiot,” Chris tells her matter-of-factly.

“I don’t know about that,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “He saved your life.”

Chris gets up from the couch, rubbing absentmindedly at his hip. “Like I said,” he reiterates quietly. “He’s an idiot.”

Sherry isn’t quite sure how to respond to that. He doesn’t ask her to.

\---------------------------

The arm looks disgusting.

It’s a mangled mess of glistening bones and sinewy muscle, a giant’s limb hanging off of a pale, scrawny Piers. From the window it sort of looks like some kind of worm, eating its way up to the sniper’s chest. Chris feels like vomiting.

He can’t really see very much from the window. There’s Piers, lying there looking kinda dead, and then there’s the machines, telling Chris otherwise. His heartbeat is slowed and steady and the monitor jumps up and down, recording every breath. His hands are curled into slight fists and if Chris looks close enough he can see them curl in and twitch every once and a while.

So he’s alive. Chris isn’t sure what he should be feeling but it’s mostly nothing. Maybe it’s still throbbing in his cut-up forearm that’s distracting him from everything else.

Sherry is on the phone, talking quietly and standing a few feet off with her back turned to him. He listens in without much interest.

“I’m fine, and _no,_ Jake, he wasn’t- don’t say it with that tone. Yes. It went well. We talked about his condition…right, we’re at the hospital now.” There’s a pause, and Chris hears the faint onslaught of Wesker’s son’s voice from the line. Of _Jake’s_ voice. He really has to stop thinking that way.

“I’ll be home in an hour or so,” Sherry says. “Can you do dinner? Yes, I’m serious. Jake, come on. You just have to turn on the oven, the lasagna is already on the top rack. _Jake._ Please, please tell me you know how to work the oven. Go into the kitchen, okay? Yes. Hit the button on the left and turn the temp to 360. The one on the left. It’s right there. Are you looking? On the left. On the far left. _Jake!”_

There’s another silence, longer this time. Sherry sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Fine, go ahead and wait until I’m home. You can starve, for all I care.”

She pauses, voice soft.

“I…love you, too. See you soon. Bye.”

She slides the phone into her coat pocket and Chris smiles but covers it with his hand as she turns around.

“What?” she asks, walking towards him.

“Nothing,” he says. But he drops his hand and lets her see his grin.

She punches him in the shoulder playfully. “Shut up,” she says, in that slightly embarrassed but trying-not-to-giggle voice that Claire used to get whenever Chris commented on her latest crush.

He doesn’t remember the last time he heard her talk like that. He doesn’t really remember the last time he’s seen Claire at all.

Sherry links her arm through his and Chris blinks. She’s a rather up-front person, cutting straight through his personal bubble to provide whatever comfort she deems necessary. He can see why she’s able to break through to Jake: there’s something about her personality that Chris would bet draws in even the most hardened people.

“He looks better than he did last week,” Sherry tells him. She doesn’t even reach his shoulder. “You shouldn’t worry so much, Chris.”

“I’m not worried,” Chris says, forgetting that he’s an open book. “They’re doing everything they can for him.”

Sherry lets it fly, this time. “Maybe you’ll be able to go inside next time. Would you like that?”

“Sure,” says Chris, feeling a pang in his chest as Sherry leans her head against his arm.

“You remind me of Dad,” she says. “But bigger. And way quieter.”

“You remind me of Claire,” Chris tells her. “But smaller. And way…blonder.”

Sherry smiles against his shirt. “Thanks.”

They stand there for a few more seconds, watching the machines surrounding Piers blink and beep.

“Do you wanna come over?” Sherry asks him. “You and Jake and I can have dinner together.”

Chris exhales, half-amused, half-skeptical. “Dinner with Jake, huh? I…maybe it’s best if I don’t.”

“He’d like you,” Sherry says. “If he knew you.”

“You think you know me?” Chris asks- not angry, just despondent.

Sherry sighs. “I’d like to, Chris. It’s been a while since I’ve had any real friends. Being an agent doesn’t include a lot of opportunities for personal interaction. I think it might be the same for you, too.”

“You’ve got Jake,” Chris tells Sherry.

“And now you’ve got Piers,” Sherry tells Chris. “But having just one, single person in your life isn’t always enough.”

He thinks about Jill and Claire and Leon. How he hasn’t had real correspondence with any of them for months- _years,_ in Jill’s case. Having Piers back makes a bit of a difference. But how long until he cuts things off with him, as well?

He has a habit of secluding himself from the people he’s grown close to, and somehow Sherry knows it.

“Maybe some other time,” he says, and he can tell she’s disappointed with him. But he’s been living alone for too long, with just him and a couple bottles of beer a day, and incorporating him into the real world is going to take more than a trip to the hospital.

If anything, Chris’s declination will only make Sherry try harder. All of Claire’s stories about him, telling her how funny he was, how eager, spurs her to dig at him, to pick away the deadened skins that the B.S.A.A. has forced him to grow over the years.

She drives him back to his apartment and drops him off at the front. He stands in the snow and watches her car grow smaller and smaller until it turns the corner and vanishes completely.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, but full of a lot of heavy stuff. Mostly just Chris having trouble communicating. D:

They tell Chris that the first word out of Piers' mouth was _Captain._

"I'm not surprised," Sherry says conversationally, addressing Jake at breakfast and ignoring the way his foot is bumping against hers from underneath the table. "He blacked out just after the explosion, so it's understandable that he'd be worried. It took them a while to convince him of where he was. For the first few minutes, the arm hurt so badly that he was convinced he'd been sent to hell. Can you imagine waking up like that?"

Jake's toes slide up her ankle; she kicks at his foot in irritation. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Huh?" says Jake, and she gives up.

The hospital staff has Chris's phone number; he doesn't remember leaving it with them, but he figures Sherry arranged it. They call him the day after Piers wakes up and that's how he finds out.

He thinks about going but he doesn't remember which highway exit Sherry took when they visited last, so he stays at home. He thinks about cleaning up but he doesn't know where to start, so he leaves everything be. He thinks about ordering a pizza, but he can't even remember his street address.

Finally Sherry calls.

 _"He's awake,"_ she says cheerfully.

"I know. Hospital called this morning."

_"That was considerate of them. Do you want to go in and see him?"_

"No."

_"Chris."_

Damn, he thinks, because she can catch a lie from over the phone, too. "I'm tired."

_"Chris."_

"Really. You go, I'll stay home."

 _"Chris!"_ She's scolding him, now, but there's concern in her voice, too. _"What's the matter?"_

He twists the phone cord around his finger until it turns purple. "Um," he says. "I...I think he'll be mad at me."

The line is quiet.

 _"I...well, he may be a little...peeved,"_ says Sherry carefully.

"Peeved. Huh."

_"He'll get over it, Chris."_

"You go," Chris repeats. "I'll stop by in a few days."

 _"I..."_ She sounds like she's going to say something else, but sighs instead. He can almost hear her shaking her head at him. _"I'll tell him you said hi."_ They hang up and Chris wipes the sweat off the back of his neck.

He wants to give him time and so he stays away for a good week and a half. Sherry calls every day to give him updates, which he's grateful for, and he drops by Sherry's house once to deliver a get-well card, one that she promises to deliver. But eventually staying away is just too damn hard, and so at last he goes into his bedroom with a hammer.

He'd had the badges framed. The blood wouldn't wash out of Piers' but that was still kind of okay, as long as he had it.

The frame is plain and wooden; he'd built it himself, taking a day to buy and fit the plywood and glass into a medium sized rectangle. They hung side-by-side, mirroring each other. The only difference back when he'd put them up was that one of them was a memorial of what had been, while the other was a reminder of what was.

He takes the hammer in his hand and twists it around to the claw end, fitting it to the nail's head and jerking sharply. It pops out of the wall after a few minutes, sliding out with a satisfying grinding noise. The second nail comes more quickly than the first and Chris drops the hammer just in time to catch the frame before it hits the ground. He's not really looking to repeating another broken glass disaster.

 _I'm going,_ he texts Sherry, sliding the badges into a manilla envelope and gunning the engine of his pickup. _Bet you five bucks he won't be happy to see me._

His phone buzzes in his back pocket when he signs in at the front desk. He flips it open, scanning the words as he heads to the ward. _Bet you ten bucks he will,_ is Sherry's message, and the muscle in his cheek twitches, in both amusement and anxiety. _It's on, Chris Redfield._

He stops in front of Piers' room, hanging back and fidgeting. It'd be so easy to just turn and walk back the way he'd came, to simply tell Sherry that Piers had been asleep. The doubts that he'd squashed on the way over bloom out again and he comes up with a million different reasons why he should go. Maybe he would have, if the door hadn't opened up then.

The doctor hurries out, bumping into him; her nose is buried so deeply in whatever's written on her clipboard that she doesn't see him towering two feet over her. "Oops," she says, looking up in surprise, "sorry," and then recognizes him and smiles. "Oh- hi there, Mr. Redfield!"

"Hey, doc," Chris says, already backing away. "I can come back another time, if you're busy in there-"

"Actually, you're just in time," she says, and his heart sinks. "I've just finished his examination."

"Great," says Chris, even though it's not. "Uh...so how is he?"

"Alive and kicking." She sounds confident, which eases a few of his worries. "He's been doing really well- at this point, I think we can say he's a go. We'll surgically remove the arm next week, and after that, we'll have the date for his release."

"Next week," Chris repeats. "He wants it amputated?"

She nods, her forehead creasing. "Making the decision was rough on him, but we've all agreed that it'll be better that way. Easier, if you will."

Chris is stunned. Sherry hadn't told him that.

The doctor glances behind her and gives Chris another smile. "I know it's all a bit much to handle. Why don't you go in? Visiting hours are over at five; you've got quite a bit of time."

"Great," says Chris again. "Great." Then the door slides open and his feet are moving forward even though he'd rather not.

There's a bouquet of flowers on the bedside table- from his parents, maybe. The get-well card he'd sent with Sherry is propped up next to it. The room's curtains are open, light catching on his old partner's face and highlighting the scars. They're a raw color, bright red and splashing over the side of his face, disfiguring his cheek.

 _You, you, you,_ they mock Chris. _Because of you. You, your fault. Look at what you've done._

He sits in one of the plastic chairs next to the bed and twists the envelope in his fingers. "Um," he says.

Piers turns his head, eyes widening for just a second. The right one is milkier than the left but just barely; they're both that hazel-green that they had always been, disconcerting at first but strangely familiar once Chris had gotten used to it.

"I brought you something." He dumps the envelope over and the badges drop into his palm. "Saved them for you, just in case...this happened. Doubted it. But kept 'em like a memorial, or something. Like souvenirs. Shit, that's not what I meant. But you know. Remembrances." He's rambling and so he clears his throat, searching for words. "Whatever, I...I saved them, so you can have them back, I guess. If you want. Um."

Piers takes the badges with bony fingers. He's so thin that Chris could probably pick him up now- he knew wouldn't have been able to before, even if he'd never really tried. The guy had been all muscle and way heavier than he'd looked: he remembers that from all the times he'd dove on top of him, shielding him from a bullet or whatever had been coming at them back then.

He had always shielded him, had always taken the bullet. That was something that had never changed, even up to their very last moments.

Chris watches him turn the badges over in his left hand. The other arm lies hidden underneath the bedsheets, its grotesque shape visible within the folds and creases of the blankets. He's glad that it's not out in the open because he knows that he'd probably end up staring, and that's definitely not the best way to go through a reunion.

Piers is staring down at the badge that had been his, fingers tracing the letters from the _B_ to the second _A,_ and touching the spots of scarlet littering the fabric. Then he moves to the other- Chris's badge, old and faded at the ends but unstained, whole, and clean. He doesn't speak as he runs his thumb over the stitches. He doesn't glance up, doesn't make any other movement.

But after what seems like years he finally turns. Looks at Chris. Opens his mouth.

"You fucking bastard," Piers says.

Chris doesn't even blink.

"I ask about you and they say you're _in the area._ I ask if you're on duty and they say _not anymore."_ His voice is weak and wheezing and lacking most of the venom it had before, whenever Chris had gotten under his skin, but its the words that matter and so it hurts all the same. "I ask them what they mean, because you wouldn't dare leave the service after what I've given, would you? After all that, you _couldn't_ leave, right?" Piers clenches his good hand into a fist, crushing the badges beneath his knuckles. "But I ask for your status. And they say _retired."_

Chris says nothing.

 _"Retired._ So what the fuck did I do it all for, then? What did I save you for, huh? I have a week to decide whether I really want to live the rest of my life with one arm, I don't even know if I'm fucking _human_ anymore, and you're telling me that I could've let you die, and that it wouldn't have made a difference."

He starts to cough, violently, heaves straining his thin frame. Chris scoots forward automatically, but Piers shakes him off angrily, eyes narrowed and mouth gasping for air. "I did it for the B.S.A.A and for _you,_ you asshole! I did it so you could save the fucking world, and- and instead...you saved yourself."

Still Chris says nothing. He's not sure if it's because he doesn't want to or just because he can't.

"Fucking retired." Piers turns his face away. "Jesus Christ."

There's a silence that lingers and stretches on; Piers closes his eyes. A minute passes and Chris thinks that maybe he's fallen asleep, too drained from the rush of emotion and from speaking the most words he's uttered since waking up. But then his eyes flicker open again, and he stares up at the ceiling, his next words coming bleakly and heavy with exhaustion.

"You know what?" he whispers. "I don't even know why I'm surprised. I shoulda known you would give up. You live to disappoint; it's who you are. Fuck you, Chris. Just...get the fuck out."

Chris doesn't argue with him. He pushes back the chair and gets to his feet, pinching his hip the way he always does when he's upset. It aches less when he does; Piers has been his partner long enough to know that but he doesn't seem to notice, either ignoring the fact or simply unable to remember.

He puts his hand on the door, then turns. There are words stuck in his throat that rise like bile, and damn it if he can't help but let them out.

"I wanted you to be the last."

Piers' brow puckers, eyes flicking over to Chris and then back to the ceiling, unwilling to meet his gaze. "What?"

Chris clears his throat. "All those men," he said. "You know. The ones that died believing in me. I wanted you to be the last."

Piers scoffs feebly. But for all his harshness, he's lost for words.

Chris waits.

"That's a fucked-up excuse," is what he comes up with at last, mumbled beneath his breath and directed to his toes at the end of the bed instead of at Chris. "That is one pitiful, fucked-up excuse." He almost says _Captain,_ right there at the end of that sentence; he almost says _sir._

He bites it back furiously. Chris doesn't deserve the honor.

"It's not when you're me," Chris responds. There's more than words clogging his throat now, and he forces it back painfully. "Not when everyone you touch ends up getting hurt."

It had been the first decision that he'd made after it all had gone down, and when he'd done all the paperwork and turned in his gun and said good-bye to the guys down at the command center he'd felt an overwhelming ocean of relief crush his body, sweeping it down into a blissful pit of solace and rest. He'd thought that maybe Piers had felt the same, watching Chris speed away from him, and if anything had eased his pain back then, it had been that.

"I'll check in on you later," he says.

"Don't bother," says Piers.

But he leaves the get-well card on his bedside table. And he turns the badges over in his fingers until he falls asleep, clutching them against his chest.

 _You owe me five bucks,_ Chris texts Sherry that night as he drowns himself the way he knows best, popping open the cap to his sixth beer.

She doesn't text back.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Piers is having doubts about the amputation. Chris knocks some sense into him. There's a good share of fluffy angst as well. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't find a good place to put this, but I just wanted to add the fact that the doctor is part of the B.S.A.A., so she knows about Sherry's "supergirl" status. It made sense that way. Plus I'm pretty sure a normal doctor would take one look at Piers and run screaming in the opposite direction.

The nurse at the front desk looks unusually relieved to see Sherry, and that's the first warning she gets when she walks in.

"Thank god you're here," is the second. "There's been a development- not the good kind."

 _Oh, no._ Sherry's stomach clenches. "What's the matter? Is he okay?"

"I'm so sorry," the nurse says. "The infection in the arm has started to spread again."

"What?" Sherry stands on her tip-toes and leans over the counter, gripping it tightly. "That can't be; I thought the doctor said that they'd _stopped_ the virus."

"Mutations happen."

Sherry whirls around to see the doctor, hands shoved into her lab coat pockets and her expression sympathetic. "Especially in cases like these," she finishes. "You of all people should know that, Ms. Birkin."

She would bristle if she was a less collected woman, but Sherry holds her ground, arms crossed and tone sharp. "You said everything was fine. You said he was a go."

But the doctor can only provide her condolences. "This isn't any ordinary medical case; please try to understand that. We may have secured his stability, but the mutation chose to waver. We may have stopped the virus, but it grew and adapted. There's no use in accusing us in something that's out of our hands."

"Fine." Sherry clenches her jaw. "If you won't take the blame, then at least fix him. Stop it again, do whatever you did last time." She wishes that she was a scientist like her dad had been; maybe then she would at least be of use here. She wishes her dad was still alive; he would know better than any of them how to find the solution.

"We've already used Mr. Muller's blood, Ms. Birkin. I told you before that the virus had been a part of him for so long that there could be repercussions- and these are the repercussions. At this point, our only option is to remove the arm."

"So do it," says Sherry.

The doctor looks at her and looks away. "He won't let us."

"Do it anyway."

"We need his approval."

"I thought he'd already approved it, I thought he _wanted_ the amputation-"

"We gave him time to think about it; he's having doubts. We need his signature."

"Then forge it!"

"Ms. Birkin," says the doctor, very serious. "That would be an illegal commitment of an adult to an unauthorized procedure- and a national felony."

Sherry feels like she wants to cry, or hit someone, or both.

 _"Why're you always up there?"_ Jake had grumbled before she had left. _"You're at the hospital more than you're at home, lately. And you barely know the guy."_

He's sounded almost jealous and that had made her smile, but his question was a legitimate one and made her think, too. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she sees herself in Piers- sees someone helpless at the mercy of a biological mishap, someone scared of losing themselves to a monstrosity, someone that is little more than a child- their whole lives ahead of them and watching every opportunity slip away, right in front of their eyes. A child, even if Piers is older than her and far more experienced.

It's like watching a reflection of herself in Raccoon City, all those years ago.

 _"Why do you care so much?"_ Jake had asked. _"Sherry?"_

His worry of losing her to another guy seemed miniscule in the face of her own thoughts. But she'd kissed him anyway and patted his cheek and told him to remember to feed the cat, because he'd forgotten the day before and the poor thing had been starving by the time she'd gotten home.

The doctor touches her shoulder, bringing her back to the actual moment.

"We _need_ to amputate," she says. "Can you convince him?"

Sherry bites her bottom lip, feeling moisture prick at the corners of her eyes. "To...to be honest, I...don't know him very well," she admits, voice catching. "I...I doubt it."

"Anyone," says the doctor. "Is there anyone you know who can?"

"I- Chris!" The realization hits Sherry like a sack of bricks and she almost smacks her forehead. In the heat of the bad news and the doling out of the facts, she'd almost forgotten about him.

He hadn't been back to the hospital since Piers had very nearly kicked him out- but he would come now, he would come for this. "He can be here in a half an hour," she tells the doctor, who gives a brisk nod before instructing the nurse to let him through without the necessary procedures.

A half an hour or less, all depending on how fast he speeds. Which he will, because Chris would kill Piers before Piers got another chance to kill himself.

 _Ach,_ she thinks, fighting off a wobbly, blurry smile, _love,_ and shakes her head as she dials his number.

\---------------------------

He takes the highway at eighty miles an hour and unbuckles his seatbelt before the car has even stopped.

"Oh, good," Sherry says in relief when he comes running into the waiting room. "You didn't get pulled over."

If he had, he would've ditched the cop. But he doesn't tell her that- and anyway, she knows.

"Get me the fuck in there." He brushes her off, angrier than she's ever seen him. No one bothers to stop him as he pushes past to get to the door and no one says anything as the hinges rattle behind him.

Piers is raised up on his elbows, pillows fluffed up to support his neck. He's scowling, his head turned towards the windows, and his body tenses as he hears the door slam shut. "The answer is still _no,_ doc. I need more time, how many times do I have to say-"

"I'm not your fucking doctor," Chris snaps, and Piers freezes.

"Chris-"

He's storming around his bedside, finger jabbing at him accusingly. "What are you _thinking,_ you jackass? You're either gonna lose the arm or die- are you an idiot or something?"

Piers lifts his chin. "It's my own decision to make," he says. I wanna be sure this is what I want before I go ahead and let them tear me apart-"

"Let them cut your fucking arm off, or I'll do it myself," the ex-Captain snarls. "And that's an order, god damn it, so suck it up and sign the fucking form!"

It's the voice he used to use whenever he would make one of the camp maggots _drop and give me twenty,_ and sure enough, it's muscle memory that Piers is struggling against. His brain still functions like a soldier's, and he twists his good hand into the sheets, using every fiber in his body to refrain from saluting. "You- you're not my Captain," he manages, words spat through gritted teeth. "You gave all that up, remember?"

He hasn't seen Chris angry since their last tour and he's forgotten how scary it can be. The guy is fuming, nearly blowing steam out of his ears, and his jaw is so tight that for a ridiculous second Piers wonders if someone's screwed in hinges. He looks the way he'd looked back in China, shoving Piers against the wall, words growled in the back of his throat- _fall in line, soldier._

Just like China, Piers shoves back. And just like China, he remembers too late that shoving back doesn't help anything.

The thing about Chris is that when he gets really mad, he gets really quiet. He's a mostly quiet guy anyway, off the field, but that's a different kind- a softer kind. Mad and quiet is a bad mix- a dangerous mix, and the terror Piers feels as Chris clamps his hands down on the bed railings and leans towards him with that crazed glint in his eye is irrational but very, very real.

"You'll do what I say," Chris breathes slowly, breath warm against the sniper's face, "or I will make your life a living hell. Do you understand, soldier?"

 _It's muscle memory,_ Piers tries to tell himself, rebelling wildly against his militarized instincts. His body screams for him to give a response, to straighten and get on board and obey his superior; his brain screams for him to tell Chris to get the fuck out, to ignore whatever the guy says. It's a huge collision of opposing forces and he bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, trying to stay in control. _Muscle memory, muscle memory, that's all-_

 _"Do you understand?!"_ Chris barks, and too late, Piers' left hand flies up into a clumsy salute.

"Yes, sir!" he yelps, swallowing hard, his fingers grazing his hairline stiffly; Chris is out of the room and yelling for the form within the next few seconds, and before Piers knows what's happening, they've got the pen in his hand and the paper slid under his nose.

 _Patient approval,_ it reads, with the line next to it waiting for his own scrawl, and his hand is shaking and his vision blurring and he feels the room start to spin, his mouth going dry, his throat seizing up.

"Breathe." Chris's fingers press down over his, quieting him. "Breathe, Piers- c'mon, breathe-"

He breathes and the fog lifts from his brain and he looks up at Chris, eyes wide, and Chris looks back, steady and composed and everything he was in the service- it's his Captain he sees, then, not the man he's convinced himself is a failure, and he closes his eyes and he signs the fucking form.

They slide him onto a stretcher and strap him down, the harness cutting into his mutated flesh. He keeps his eyes fixed on Chris the entire time.

"You did a real good thing," he hears, over and over again, echoing in the back of his mind; at first he's not sure if Chris is actually saying anything at all or whether he's just got the past on repeat.

"You did a good thing. A real good thing, okay?"

"A real good thing," he echoes numbly.

"That's right- that's it, Piers. You did a real good thing, listen to me-"

They wheel away the stretcher and Chris has to let go of Piers' hand, watching the sniper try to grab at it again only to find himself moving further and further away. "Chris," cries Piers helplessly, his face contorted as he struggles against the restraints, and his voice cuts through him, cuts straight fucking through him.

"He'll be fine," the doctor tells Chris.

"He'd fucking better be," Chris says, and doesn't back down even when Sherry puts a hand on his forearm and even when the doctor looks back at him with a cool stare that would stop any other man cold.

Any other man. Just not Chris.

She shakes her head, then, a half-smile on her lips, and heads out with the rest of the medical team. The double doors click shut behind them and then it's just Sherry, Chris, and a lot of time.

\---------------------------

When Piers wakes up there's a piece of him missing and a guy drooling all over the side of his bed. It takes him a few seconds but he figures it out eventually- the drooling guy is Chris, and the missing piece is his right arm.

He panics.

Twisting his body, craning his neck frantically to see it; it's hidden underneath his hospital gown and he shakes the sleeve back, heart thudding in his chest.

Sure enough, it's gone.

The stump is tied off but he can imagine what it would look like without the clean, white bandages. Red and raw with a sickly pallor, sticky with the few drops of blood that were able to squeeze their way past the stitches. Dropping his head back against the pillows, Piers shudders and takes a breath and shudders again.

A ton of guys in the service had gotten limbs removed. Blown clean off, sometimes, from a grenade explosion or a carefully placed mine. Ripped apart by some kind of B.O.W, in other cases. It was unlikely that they were given the choice to have it amputated; Piers should be grateful that he was in a sanitized, controlled building when it happened.

But he has one less arm than he should. There's nothing to be grateful for.

He sucks in a deep breath through his nose, digs the fingernails of his left hand into his palm, and dips his head down again, taking the bandages between his teeth and jerking sharply. They drop to the mattress, slowly at first but then unwinding faster, revealing the deformity.

It's not red, or raw, or sticky.

It's a pale white, seemingly drained of all blood. He can actually trace the places where the veins have faded, stopped by the intense pressure of the bandages against his skin. He twitches his shoulder, out of jaded curiosity. The stump wiggles back and forth.

If Chris hadn't been jolted out of sleep by the retching, Piers probably would've thrown up all over himself. But once he sees what's happening, he's awake and moving fast, and the vomit hits the bottom of the bucket instead of the bedsheets.

It comes fast and in waves, watery and reeking of acid. Every time Chris thinks he's done another shiver runs through him, starting at his waist and traveling all the way up to his neck, where he pulls his head over the bucket edge and hurls again. He rubs the back of the sniper's neck, where the hair is short and bristly, and that seems to help because after a time the heaves become shorter, and less spews from his mouth, and he stops gripping the bucket like a lifeline.

Finally it stops.

"You okay?" Chris asks.

"Yeah," says Piers, and rests his forehead on Chris's shoulder and cries like he hasn't cried in years.

Chris has faced a lot. All kinds of B.O.W.'s. Corporations who unleash horrors on the world simply for the sake of destruction. Crazy, evil psychos who call themselves gods. Kids of those crazy, evil psychos who aren't sure whether to pull the trigger on the man who killed their fathers.

But this is the first time he's had a soldier unload all over his T-shirt and tell him that they've never been so afraid in their life.

Chris doesn't know what to say. He just sits there, listening to Piers' ragged, breathless cries and feeling the hot tears seep through his collar. But maybe that's okay, anyway. Some things don't need as many words as others, and thank god, because Chris has never been good with words when it comes to situations like these.

He sleeps at the hospital that night, too.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to update! I just got bitch-slapped with writer's block for about three weeks. I haven't forgotten about any of my works- I've just gotten a bit booked up with all of them. 
> 
> The song in this chapter can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n7Zwz-ABXU
> 
> Dear old Bruce.

Piers is let out of the hospital two weeks later, and he refuses to let Chris help him into the truck. 

“Knock it off,” he snaps, tapping his cane on the ground impatiently when Chris moves forward to grip his good arm for the second time. “I can do it; I’m not a fucking kid.”

Chris doesn’t say anything, but as usual, there’s stuff he would say if he was a different man- a braver one. Like how he knows that Piers isn’t a kid- that even though he’s much younger and less experienced in the field, he has the same burdens that Chris does, and maybe even more. After all, Chris hasn’t been through anything like this before. He’s had mental instability- PTSD, like all the guys do. But never physical instability. Chris has always been in shape, always been whole. Piers is in a whole different shithole than his, right now. 

Piers glares daggers at him but he can’t help it; he holds the truck door open for him and hovers there until his old partner is settled and strapped in before he shuts it again, circling around to the driver’s seat. The hum of the motor is familiar and comforting and he’s more than okay with a simple silence on the drive over to Sherry’s, but Piers fidgets uncomfortably until Chris finally begins to tap through channels on the radio, listening to each one for a few seconds before moving on. 

There’s country, which he’s never been a fan of even though Claire likes it, and pop, which is too god damn happy and makes everything a whole lot more awkward. There’s jazz, which doesn’t quite suit him, and heavy metal, which most definitely does not fit either. In all honesty Chris has never been good with music, and so he watches Piers out of the corner of his eye, evaluating the sniper’s expressions as he moves to every station. 

That’s how he knows where to stop. Just a few notes of the song, and Piers’ mouth makes a little curve, his eyes crinkle at the corners, and Chris draws his hand back towards the steering wheel. 

“Springsteen,” Piers says quietly. “My dad used to play him all the time.”

It’s kinda soft and almost croony- nearing the usually fatal line to country. Chris tries to figure out if he’s a fan as Piers fills him in- this song in particular is called _If I Should Fall Behind,_ and it’s a pretty good one for Springsteen enthusiasts. 

“You one of the enthusiasts, then?” Chris asks Piers. 

“It depends,” Piers tells him. “I’ve been to a few concerts, you know, back when I was in high school, and I liked them, I guess.”

“But?”

“It just depends,” he says again, shifting in his seat. “On the- the meaning behind it all, or something. The words, you know? I like this one,” he adds, almost an afterthought. “Yeah, I…like this one.”

 _“I’ll wait for you,”_ the lyrics go, _“if I should fall behind, wait for me.”_

Chris looks over at Piers out of the corner of his eye, keeping his hands steady on the wheel. The sniper has his head back against the seat and he exhales slightly, eyes slipping half-closed and fingers tapping along in time to the rhythm. He looks tired and weary and so much older than Chris has ever remembered him; the scars that trace his face are light but still visible, clinging to his skin like some kind of sadistic work of art. But he looks more alive than he ever has since his recovery-more _human,_ Chris realizes, and has to swallow harder to clear whatever the fuck is building in his throat. 

_“Darlin, I’ll wait for you. And if I should fall behind, wait for me.”_

He’s been staring too long. Piers’ eyes snap open and he turns his head.

“Hey,” says Chris, stumbling over something in between an apology and an explanation, but Piers is already tearing his gaze away, jaw tightening, fingers drumming on the seat faster now, an awkward, uncomfortable tapping instead of the controlled, steady beat from before.

“Kind of a dumb song, actually,” he says abruptly, and changes the station, nervous fingers slipping on the buttons until the static eases. 

They drive the rest of the way with Tim McGraw drilling into their ears, and neither one of them says another word until Chris pulls into Sherry’s driveway.

Piers makes to open the door but Chris stops him, reaching over and grabbing his arm- the one that’s still there, that is. “Hey,” he says again.

Piers stares back at him evenly. Chris clears his throat.

“I, uh…I’ll see you ‘round.”

The look he receives in return is icy and bitter, but it’s so quickly replaced with indifference that Chris isn’t even sure that he’s seen correctly. “Yeah, fine. Whatever.”

Piers gets out of the car and Chris lets him. He drives off without going in, hoping that Sherry won’t be too disappointed with him, and that Jake won’t rip Piers’ head off the minute he walks over the threshold.

He pops open a beer when he gets back to the apartment, then settles on the couch and takes a good look around as he sips at the drink. There are cans and bottles scattered across the floor. There’s food littering the kitchen counters, and he’s not sure what he’d find in the back of the fridge- if he ever bothered to look. The carpet is stained and gray. He thinks that maybe, at one point, it might have been white. It’s a mess; he could probably be on that reality show on T.V. about packrats and hoarders if he wanted. 

The truth is that he’s depressed. 

He notes this with a weary acceptance that probably doesn’t impact him as deeply as it should. After Piers’ death he’d labeled it as another bought of PTSD, something that he’d only begun to suffer after Jill had been declared K.I.A. But Piers is alive, now, and he feels pretty much the same. So he guesses it’s depression.

When he doesn’t know what to do, he usually calls Sherry. That’s what he does now.

 _“Chris!”_ she sounds tired, but her voice is bright.

“Sorry. Is it too late?” He realizes that his bottle has been empty for a while; he glances at the clock and finds, to his surprise, that it’s a quarter after midnight. “Oh, shit. I didn’t realize-”

 _“It’s okay,”_ she reassures him. _“We’ve just finished moving him in, so I’m still up. Everything looks really good, Chris. I think he’ll be comfortable here.”_

“Yeah?”

 _“Yeah.”_ She hesitates. _“Do you want to talk to him?”_

Chris rubs at his hip. “No. I just…I’m glad he’s all right.”

There’s a pause. 

_“Chris?”_ Sherry’s voice is soft. _“Do you need me to come over?”_

She knows. She always knows. Maybe it’s a thing women can do.

“I dunno,” Chris says. “I don’t think so. No. I just thought…that I’d call you. I dunno. I’m gonna go, okay? You should get some rest.”

He feels guilty for worrying her, for putting this on her mind when she already has a cynical amputee camping in her home, and Wesker’s son- _Jake,_ that is- to deal with. He’d just needed an ear and a shoulder. And who else is he going to call? Leon? Jill? Claire?

 _“Are you going to be all right?”_ Sherry asks sympathetically.

“I’ll be fine.”

_“I’ll come over tomorrow, okay?”_

“You don’t need to,” he says, but he knows she will and he’s grateful for it. 

_“I’m glad you called, Chris. Really, I am.”_

“Huh. M’kay.”

_“See you tomorrow?”_

“Uh-huh. Bye.”

 _“Bye,”_ she says. He can hear her smiling from over the phone. 

The line goes dead but he weighs the phone in his hand for a while longer, thinking about the friends he used to have and the friends he’s left behind and how, somehow, he hasn’t worked up the courage to cut Sherry loose yet- neither Sherry nor _Piers,_ for that matter- and how it’s scaring the fuck out of him.

He goes to bed but promises himself that he’ll clean up tomorrow, before she arrives. It’s a promise he’ll probably break, like he always does, but it’s nice to have goals, even if they’re never accomplished.

\---------------------------

He has trouble dressing. He can hardly eat. Even pissing is hard. 

Sherry helps out when she can, and Jake sulks.

“Here,” she murmurs, sliding his plate over to her side of the table during dinner and helping him to a serving of peas. She offers him a small smile that he doesn’t return. 

“He doesn’t need your help,” Jake mutters into his hand, staring off into the corner of the room.

Sherry turns on him with an upset expression, but Piers shakes his head. “It’s fine. He’s right. I need to learn to do these things on my own.”

She doesn’t try and dissuade him, but her frown lingers, and she studies him throughout the rest of the meal. It’s nothing new, actually- she’s been studying him throughout most of the week. He’s quite aware of it but doesn’t comment, even if it pisses him off. Quick glances, her eyes darting up to meet his and then dropping again when she realizes that he’s noticed. Or longer stares, when she thinks he doesn’t notice. Watching him stumble around the apartment, watching him bring his fork to his mouth clumsily, watching him try to write, the pen scratching across the paper in wavering scribbles, because he’d been right-handed, and now he has to learn his letters all over again.

“That looks pretty good,” she says encouragingly, looking on from just over his shoulder. He pretends to flinch, even if he’s known she’d been there the entire time. 

“It’s okay,” he says blandly. 

“Writing to anyone in particular?” she asks, her voice intrudingly curious. As if she doesn’t already know; she’s been standing behind him for a while and it’s likely that she’s already seen the address on the envelope beside him.

“Dad.” His father hadn’t been too happy when Piers had finally called, and he didn’t blame him. He hadn’t been in touch with his parents for over two years and now, when he’d dialed their number at last, it was to tell them that he wouldn’t be coming home for the summer like they’d originally planned- and that he’s a newly established veteran. Out of the BSAA, into seclusion. With a chestful of medals, without an arm. The last time he’d checked in with them had been just after Edonia, and just before he’d begun his search for his Captain; he figures he owed them more than what he’s given, but he doesn’t care, at this point.

Speaking of Captains- and of veterans- Chris hasn’t called. Or, at least, he hasn’t called to talk to Piers. Piers is pretty sure that he and Sherry talk at least once a day- about him, no doubt. He finds it unsettling, annoying, and most of all, insulting.

But he doesn’t say anything. At all, really.

Back at the writing desk, Sherry tries to engage him in verbal conversation a few more times.

“Your parents must be proud of you.”

Piers’ brow darkens incredulously. “I don’t understand why they would be.”

“Hey!” Sherry’s fingers slip down to his shoulder, tightening there in what she probably thinks is a reassuring comfort. Instead, fury rises in him, and he swallows the intense, irrational urge to hit her. “You know that’s not true.” 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes.” She presses to make him understand. “They’ve plenty to be proud of. You’ve done something amazingly sacrificial- you’ve given something that not many would give.”

“Don’t give me that martyr crap,” Piers says, a little sharper than necessary. 

Sherry’s hand falls back to her side, and it’s like a cold wind running down the back of his neck. “Piers,” she says, quieter, “it’s not _crap.”_

But she turns and pads out of the room, leaving him be- for now.

The truth is that he’s depressed.

And it sucks but he embraces it anyway, because it’s the closest emotion he can reach for, and because he’s too tired to reach for anything else. It goes beyond PTSD and anchors in him but he doesn’t even try to get rid of it- it’s better to feel like shit than to feel like nothing. 

When he’s done writing the letter and sealing the envelope he carries it to the spare room that they’ve set aside for him. He opens a drawer, sets it inside, and shuts it. He’s not actually planning on sending it. It’s a process he’s been going through for a couple days now, to waste time and to help quell the questions and fears that spew out of Sherry’s mouth every five minutes. She fusses over him like a mother hen, and he hates it.

He hates a lot of things, recently. 

He hates that Sherry worries about him when she barely knows him and he hates that he won’t let her. He hates that she tries to do things for him and he hates that he can’t do them himself. He hates that she talks to Chris on the phone and he hates that he doesn’t, and he hates that she goes to see Chris and he hates that he doesn’t, and he hates that she visits him almost every day and he hates that he misses him almost every day, because what the fuck is he supposed to do when it’s Chris that’s been there since the beginning of Piers’ work in the BSAA? What the fuck is he supposed to do now that he’s lost his leader _and_ his arm- now that Chris is retired and Piers is useless?

His days are literally empty; they lack all the parts of life he’d come to consider necessary. They’re void of intellectual thought, of reflexive action, of quick-paced plans. Everything that he’s grown used to over the years in combat…gone.

So instead he writes letters that he’ll never send, and hates everything and everyone he possibly can. 

“Piers,” comes Sherry’s voice from the doorway. “Do you want me to help mail those? Because I can walk them down to the driveway mailbox if it’s too much for you-”

 _“No,”_ he snaps, wheeling around, and refuses to feel the twinge of guilt that stings him as he sees her recoil. “I don’t need any fucking help- I need you to _leave me alone-_ for five minutes, at the least- can you do that, or is just in your nature to intrude on other people’s privacy all the fucking time?! It’s so fucking _irritating_ \- god damn it, you’re so fucking _pushy_ \- I don’t need you hovering like a fucking _nurse,_ damn it, just get the fuck out of my face!”

He’s shouting by the end of it all; Jake’s in the room before he finishes his last sentence and he’s as mad as Piers.

“The fuck are you screaming about?” Jake hisses.

“Your fucking girlfriend!” Piers snarls.

“Don’t you dare bitch at her for your own stupidity!”

“You think I saved Chris’s ass because of _stupidity?!”_

“Well I don’t know why else anyone would save that dumb motherfucker-”

“Don’t fucking talk about him that way!”

“Then don’t try and take it out on Sherry! It’s his fault you’re a god damned _cripple-”_

“Shut up.”

“Just fucking _face_ it! He’s a worthless, brainless bastard who led every single one of your precious recruits into a _death trap-”_

“Shut up!"

“-don’t know why the fuck you saved him- it’s not as if it was _worth_ it-”

“SHUT UP!”

Piers doesn’t consciously remember trying to hit Jake but suddenly his left fist is clenched and moving fast- a wild swing with the wrong arm, and he can just imagine the crunch of bones against his fingers and he’s so angry he’s seeing white and just before the punch lands there’s a pressure on his wrist and a sharp tug and then it’s not white Piers is seeing, but someone’s face.

“Piers?” says Chris, expression tight with surprise and shock and his fingers clamped down on Piers’ left forearm.

“Chris?” says Piers, eyes widening and voice small and the tension draining out of his body all at once.

They stare at each other.

“What are you doing?” Chris asks stupidly.

“I…” Piers fumbles for words. “I- what are _you_ doing?”

“I- I was in town. I just…I stopped in to say hi.”

“Oh. I was- I was…”

“…fighting with Muller, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Oh. Right.”

They stand there for a few more seconds until Chris realizes he still has hold of Piers’ arm, and let’s go quickly, clearing his throat and mumbling an apology. Jake is standing a few feet away, looking bashful and rubbing the back of his head, and Sherry is still standing in the doorway, appraising the situation carefully.

“I’d better go,” decides Chris, just as Piers asks “you gonna stay?” 

They chuckle and cough and then go quiet.

“Well, I…bye,” says Chris finally. He looks like he’s thinking about shaking his hand, but they’re both right-handed and he realizes that he’d only be going in to grasp fingers that aren’t there. He gives a little wave instead, and it feels pathetic and idiotic.

“Bye,” says Piers. The front door clicks shut a few moments later, and he can hear the truck’s motor roar to life from inside. 

The house is dead quiet for the rest of the day.

At dinner, Sherry brings some food into the guest room for him, and this time it’s not because she's clucking over his missing arm. “We could all use some space right now,” she murmurs. 

“I’m sorry.” He takes the plate from her, and says it and means it. “I didn’t mean to snap-”

She shushes him. “It’s all right, Piers. Jake’s in the wrong just as much as you and I are. Don’t think too hard on it.”

He eats quietly for a few minutes, not minding her silent presence. “Maybe I should go,” he says at last. “Maybe I’m not ready for all of…this. Being here.”

“Don’t say that,” says Sherry, but he’s not convinced. 

“I could get my own apartment. Just a small place.” But even as he says it, he knows it would never work. He’d deteriorate, cut connections with the outside world, maybe hurt himself if he ended up sinking that low. It wouldn’t solve anything, just create more problems. 

Sherry sighs. “We’ll figure it out,” she says, but there’s something else that she doesn’t say: the fact that she hadn’t expected to have a visitor earlier.

Chris hadn’t said anything about coming over, and that was strange. He’d never done anything without calling, before- or sending a text, at least. When Piers had been hospitalized, he’d checked with Sherry to make sure that it was okay to go, as if she was the one in charge instead of the doctor. And now, with the living situation as it was, he’d always contacted her before he’d made any kind of decision. 

But today, he’d just…walked in. And it wasn't so much about what he'd prevented as it was about the way he'd gotten there to prevent it.

“We’ll figure it out,” she says again, more confident now, and pats Piers’ shoulder before leaving. There’s a solution staring her in the face, and it’ll only take a phone call to put it into action.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Piers makes a transition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really short chapter, I'm sorry! I'm almost done with this first awkward stage, never fear. 
> 
> Also, I just wanted to let you all know that I really, really appreciate all the comments and kudos, especially those of you who give me updates on what they think of each chapter. It makes me smile every time I see an unread message in my inbox; I wish I had enough time to go back and write fuzzy love letters to you all! ^_^

“You _what?”_

Sherry faces Chris, hands on her hips. “I want Piers to move in with you.”

Chris shakes his head, dizzyingly fast. “Uh-uh. No. I- I can’t.”

“Why?” she asks. “You think you won’t be able to take care of him? Because you know better than anyone how stubborn he is- he’ll try to do everything by himself, even if you offer otherwise.” 

“I’m not a doctor,” he says.

“Neither am I,” Sherry soothes. “You don’t have to be anything other than yourself, Chris. All I’m asking is for you to be his friend.”

The ex-Captain laughs harshly. “I doubt he wants me to be his _friend,_ Sherry. You know the way he reacted back at the hospital.”

But she also knows the way he reacts when he hears Chris’s voice from over the phone, and the way his face contorts when he realizes that Chris has only called to talk to Sherry.

“He’s not happy with me and Jake, Chris. He’s on edge every day; it’s like living with a time bomb. It’s only a matter of days before he goes off again, and you know it.”

Chris hesitates. 

“If you hadn’t come in when you did…” Sherry reminds him lightly, and he waves a hand in her direction. 

“I know, I know,” he grumbles. “I saved Jake from a black eye and Piers from losing his other arm.”

“Let’s put some space in between the two of them. Okay?”

“I…I don’t…” Chris rubs the back of his neck and paces. 

“He’d be happier,” says Sherry softly.

“You really believe that?” And fuck it if he can’t keep the doubt out of his expression. “You really believe that he’d be happier _here,_ with all my shit lying around? With nothing in the fridge except beer and moldy bread? I don’t even have a spare bed for him; I’d have to sleep on the couch. He’d be happier that way, living in a four-room apartment with no other company besides _me?”_

“Yes,” says Sherry.

“Fine,” snaps Chris. “But don’t be surprised when he crawls back to you.”

“The problem with Chris,” Sherry tells Jake later that night, lying next to him propped up on her elbows, “is that he spends so much time convincing himself of his patheticness that he doesn’t have the time to evaluate any possible positive attributes of his character.”

“Whatever you say, supergirl,” Jake says, leaning over to turn off the light. “Whatever you say.”

\---------------------------

“I got it,” says Chris, taking the suitcase out of Piers’ hand. Piers grits his teeth, holding back a retort. But he lets Chris carry it, hanging back a bit to watch him haul it up the stairs before following a few paces behind.

The landing is small, just big enough for the both of them. Still, it’s a tight squeeze, and Piers’ heels teeter back on the edge of the top stair as Chris sets the suitcase down, fumbling for his apartment keys. Mumbling curses underneath his breath, he empties out most of his pockets before finding the key shoved into an inside flap on his jacket.

“There’s the little bugger,” he mutters, moving to fit it into the door. But as he turns, his elbow bumps into Piers’ chest, and, hand slipping from the railing and his missing limb unbalancing him, the sniper pitches backwards. His eyes widen slightly. The fingers of his left hand grasp at nothing but air. He’s pretty sure he’s falling. 

But then suddenly he’s not.

He’s always known how strong Chris is. Back in the field, they’d covered each other’s backs- when a simple _look out_ wasn’t enough, tackling a guy out of danger worked just as well. Chris looks the part, too; one of the men in Edonia had joked that the Captain had muscles on top of his muscles. 

His arm is tight around Piers’ waist. Piers’ fingers clutch at the fabric of Chris’s jacket. 

“Gotcha,” Chris says, breath caught in the back of his throat. “Sorry.” His arm is still supporting Piers’ entire body, all for the tips of the sniper’s toes that still grasp at the landing. 

“Thanks,” says Piers.

It’s an awkward dance, the untangling. Chris moves backwards but takes Piers with him, hand splayed over his back. Piers’ feet slip as they find solid ground, and he stumbles forward, bumping against Chris’s chest. And then the suitcase tips slightly and so Piers has to reach past Chris’s hip to grab ahold of it.

“Sorry,” says Chris again, his nervous chuckle sticking in his throat. “Sorry, I- yeah, sorry.” 

They haven’t been this close since China. But it’s a much different atmosphere than it had been, before, with all the adrenaline and anger and frustration.

Now it’s just…them. And a lot of uncertainty.

Piers takes the suitcase, shifting his weight to the right, and Chris pivots back to the door again, jamming the key in the lock. “Sorry,” he repeats. “That was…yeah, okay- right. I, uh- the apartment is kinda messy, just so you know. Sherry tried to help clean it up a bit but I don’t know how effective it was- I’m not so great at keeping shit neat, or whatever, so-”

“Chris,” says Piers abruptly.

The ex-captain looks over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

Piers glances away, glances back. “I…nevermind.”

“Hey,” Chris says, turning around. “Hey, it’s fine. Go ahead.”

So he asks. 

“Why were you at Sherry’s?”

Chris furrows his brow. “What?”

He rephrases, eyes sliding to a spot a few feet left of Chris’s head, reluctant to meet his gaze. “Why were you over at Sherry’s apartment, the other day? When I…lost my temper.”

“I…I went to see you,” Chris says.

“Yeah?” Piers asks, twisting the suitcase in his hands. “Just to see me? Not to talk to Sherry about my condition? Or to see if she was okay with having me around? Or...something?”

“I went to see you,” Chris says again. 

“Huh,” says Piers. Chris stares at him.

“Why’re you asking?” 

Piers hesitates. Chris waits. 

“Thought maybe you’d forgotten about me,” the sniper mutters. 

Chris thinks about everything- the first, long days after their last mission, the phone messages from Claire that he erased without listening to, the careful voice Sherry had used when he’d opened the door. He thinks about the blood that had drained from his face when she’d told him and the blood that started leaking out of his arm when the bottle shattered and he thinks about how Piers had looked at first, so frail and tiny and not quite alive but not quite dead, and he clears his throat a little and glances back at him, still expecting an answer.

“Nah,” Chris says, and turns back around and opens the door.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I always thought that Piers would like coffee. :)

“So,” Sherry asks brightly, leaning over the table to look Piers in the face and drawing out that single word before continuing. “How’s it going?”

Piers considers, tapping his fingers against the mug. Sherry picked him up this morning to take him out to coffee- somehow, she knows his list of weaknesses includes a dark Italian roast with whipped cream. How the fuck she’s so good with people, he doesn’t know. But it sure sheds a lot of light on how the hell she can handle Jake. 

“His apartment looks like the local trash dump,” he says sourly.

Sherry laughs. “We tried our best,” she tells him. “Honest, we did. It’s just such a black hole. Whenever we moved something off to the side we’d have to clean a whole other part of the room to find it again. And the carpet would look better, but Chris got angry with the vacuum- it’s in a few pieces, if you haven’t noticed yet.”

Piers tries to imagine Chris getting upset over a vacuum and has to hide his smile behind his hand. He’s pretty sure Sherry catches it anyway.

“It doesn’t bother you too much, does it?” she asks, swirling her coffee around with a spoon; he shakes his head. 

“How Chris wants to keep his place isn’t my business,” he says. “I’m only temporary.”

His good humor eases with that word, _temporary._ Temporary, like his right arm. Temporary, like every unit he’s been assigned to. Temporary, like a sniper before honorable discharge. 

He takes another sip of coffee to clear out the thoughts. 

“You know,” Sherry says conversationally, “you two should catch up. Get out and do something fun. Chris needs something to do other than waste himself.”

Piers’ eyes widen, then narrow as he furrows his brow, the little worried creases in his forehead standing out. “Chris- Chris is an alcoholic?”

She looks surprised. “You didn’t know?”

He’d know, yes. But he’d thought that maybe Chris had gotten better, that he’d given it up, or something. He’d never considered the alternative- that it had remained, or that it had gotten worse. 

_People like us don’t get better._

“So what does he like to do?” Piers asks, turning the subject back towards the more positive possibilities. “I feel like you know him better than I do.”

Sherry gives him a look, arching one eyebrow and tilting her head. “Oh, come on. You served with him, Piers- and you’re his friend. You tell me what he likes to do.”

“Uh…” Piers tries to fight off the oncoming smile, the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Hell, I don’t know. Um. He likes beer.”

Sherry is torn between horrified and entertained. “Piers!”

“Beer, and uh- food. No, wait- and, um, Call Of Duty.”

“Okay- seriously? _Piers.”_

“Beer. Food. COD. And, uh…Star Trek.” 

“…he likes Star Trek?”

“He has the entire T.V. collection set.” 

Sherry shakes her head, laughing. “I guess neither of us know him,” she teases. But it’s not Piers’ fault, and they both know it. Knowing a guy isn’t about memorizing his likes and dislikes, or what he does in the spare hours of the day. It’s knowing how they’ll move when a J’avo turns the corner, the way they’ll turn to avoid a machete swing, the shudder that runs through them when you slam the needle into their chest, because there has to be some way to keep going, keep moving, keep living. It’s about the way they’ll scream your name when you fall, and the tightness around their eyes as they scramble towards your body. 

Stuff like that.

“I’ll think of something,” Piers says. “We’ll settle for COD in the meantime.”

On the drive home Sherry lets him plug his iPod into the dock to blast some Springsteen. She even hums along to a few of the more popular songs. Despite his lack of social skills, he enjoys spending time with her. She’s too fucking nice. 

“Hey,” she calls, as he slides out of the car. “Thanks for coming.”

He waves a hand over his shoulder. “You’re paying next time.”

“Deal. And Piers?”

Piers stops, looks back at her. 

“Chris really appreciates having you around.”

“Yeah,” he says, eyes dropping to the ground. “Yeah, I know.”

\---------------------------

“Chris!” yells Piers from the kitchen. “I made coffee!”

He’s crazy about the stuff, Piers is. Chris never drank it before he moved in, but Piers’ eagerness to brew the shit dissipated any reluctance he’d had about it before. It’s probably the sniper’s way to wean him off of alcohol- but he doesn’t bother him about the way Chris mixes in whiskey on days he needs a pick-up.

Anyway, it’s not so bad, once you choke down the first mug. He’s either building up a taste for it or a resistance to it- one or the other, it doesn’t matter, because most of the time he’ll take whatever Piers hands him just to see the look on his face as he sips at it. 

“Chris!” yells Piers again, annoyed that he hasn’t gotten an answer. Chris can hear the scowl in his voice, can picture the crease between the sniper’s eyebrows, and the way his jaw shifts when he’s bothered, his bottom lip sticking out slightly to mark his irritation.

“Mhmm,” he calls, stretching and tossing the magazine he was scanning to the side. “Yeah, bring it in.” 

They sit together at the table across from one another as they drink. Piers glances up at Chris, setting his coffee down with a soft clunk. 

“Hey, are we doing anything this weekend?” he asks, rubbing his thumb against the rim of the mug, where a bit of coffee’s dribbling down the side. He says we and Chris doesn’t smile but he thinks about it a little. 

“Nah, nothing. Why?”

Piers shrugs. “Dunno. Just thought…you know, maybe we could do something. Get out. Have fun.”

Chris looks at him suspiciously. “You been talking to Sherry?”

“What?” Piers looks surprised. “Well- yeah, but so what?”

His ex-captain grimaces. Sometimes he feels like Sherry wants his life to be a fucking summer camp, with beaded bracelets and dandelion crowns. She’s always bothering him to _get out,_ to _have fun,_ to plan _activities._ It’s no better knowing that she’s got Piers on the bandwagon now.

“No reason,” he mutters. “Carry on.”

“I was looking through the paper the other day and saw this- thought you’d be interested.” Piers pulls a newspaper clipping out of his pocket and Chris refrains from rolling his eyes. 

“Please tell me it’s not a gala. Or a craft fair. Or one of those freaky interpretive dance festivals-”

 _‘“Interpretive dance festivals?”’_ Piers repeats, his mouth going all crooked like he wants to laugh, and pushes the clipping forward. “God, you’re a wack job.”

There’s a date and time printed on the greyed paper, and a place right underneath it in small black caps. 

**_AUGUST 16TH  
2:00 PM  
WRIGLEY FIELD_ **

Chris stares up at Piers. 

“What is this?”

The sniper gives him a look. “C’mon, Chris. Don’t tell me you don’t know Wrigley Field.”

“We’re going to a baseball game?”

“Only if you want to.”

Hell _yes_ he wants to. And at _Wrigley_ \- so much better than anything Sherry could’ve planned. He fingers the clipping, his finger rubbing along the rough, torn edges, then looks back up, a question on his lips, and Piers pulls out the baseball glove.

“Found this a couple days back,” he says. “Thought maybe you’d want to get back into the swing of things.”

“Yeah,” Chris says. “That’s…that’d be something, Piers.”

He finishes his coffee and Piers scoops up his mug to carry back to the kitchen. “And hey-” Chris calls before he disappears behind the counter. “Thanks a lot, for this. It’s great, really. I mean it.”

“Yeah, whatever,” comes the answer, and Chris smiles.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First game of catch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ready for the rant? It's short but I'll keep it that way to refrain from blowing my head off. 
> 
> I'm so incredibly tired of seeing people ship Chris and Piers like they're things. I have seen _countless_ examples of fans who use them as just another excuse to get characters naked. A relationship like theirs goes way past physical, can we agree on that? Honestly, the Nivenfield tag on Tumblr is so bad that I don't even go there anymore. And it's hard to find good fics and artwork because half of the shippers are too busy undressing them. 
> 
> ASDKJFLKSJGLKSKLDSJKL LOVE IS MORE THAN SEX ALL RIGHT GTFO PLZ K THX. 
> 
> On a lighter note I really liked writing this chapter. Much love to all. 
> 
> \- FHL <3

_Days Until The Game: T-20 and counting._

“Come on,” says Chris, sticking his head out of the truck, hair half-combed and shirt wrinkled, messy as usual, in that rugged way he always is. He’s got the air conditioning on _and_ the windows rolled all the way down, and the first thing that Piers does when he manages to slide himself into the passenger’s seat is cut the cooling.

“Bad for the environment.” He shrugs in response to Chris’s quizzical look, shifting in the chair to get comfortable. “There’s this thing called energy conservation, you know.”

Chris smiles that stupid half-grin, too quick to be truthful but too eager to be insincere. “I never really paid attention in school, Piers. You’d always heard the strangest things.”

Piers would probably laugh if he knew how wide it would stretch Chris’s smile. But he doesn’t know, so he doesn’t laugh, and twists the corners of his mouth into a frown instead. 

“You’re a wack-job,” he says. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

Chris half-grins again and Piers watches it flash across his face for just a second before vanishing into his eyes, lingering there, not-quite-hidden and peering out, waiting to resurface. “Someone might’ve.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. This guy…bit of a killjoy, to be honest.” 

“A killjoy,” Piers repeats incredulously. “You think I’m a-”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” Chris says, amused, “you selfish bastard. Whoever said I was talking about you?”

Piers raises his eyebrows. “Excuse me- who’s the one taking you to Wrigley?”

“Well, that’d be me, actually- unless you can figure out a way to drive a stickshift with one arm.”

“You know what- maybe I will. Anything’s possible, Captain.”

Chris looks over at him and he pretends not to notice at first but he can feel the intensity of the gaze and he wipes off the back of his neck with the flats of his knuckles, rolling his left shoulder the way he does when he’s uncomfortable, trying to throw the weight of Chris’s eyes off of his skin.

“I’m retired,” Chris says casually. 

“Yeah,” Piers responds, just as casual. “Sorry.”

He puts his iPod in not long after that, to fill the silence. Springsteen again, and the classic ones at that: Cadillac Ranch, Blood Brothers, Thunder Road, the works. He notices that Chris has his fingers drumming on the steering wheel the way he has his fingers drumming on his knees, and knowing that makes the awkwardness fade faster. 

“You liking it?” he asks. 

“Sure,” says Chris. “If you do.” 

_Things Chris Knows About Piers_

_#1.Bruce Springsteen is God._

When they finally reach their destination Chris tosses Piers a mitt. 

“Better get used to leftie,” he calls, grabbing a bat from the trunk and swinging it over his shoulder. “Watch out, ‘cause it might be a bitch for the first few pitches I send over.”

Piers scans the field. It’s dusty and old and obviously hasn’t been used recently; the fence is run down and rust coats it in a fine layer of burgundy. There’s bases- or, at least, he thinks they might be bases, white, leathery lumps peeking up from the thick grass that’s infested and grown over everything. The pitcher’s mound looks more like some kind of cultural effigy, and the bleachers are dulled and rickety and sharp along the edges. 

“Is maintenance coming around any time soon?” he yells over his stumped shoulder, digging a tennis-shoed toe into the sandy dirt dotting the field. “Because I think this place might need a few touch-ups.” 

Chris squats down and pats the pitcher’s mound affectionately, a cloud of dust puffing up every time his hand lands. “Don’t listen to him, baby. He doesn’t know you like I do.”

Piers glowers at him, sighing. “I still don’t really get why we’re here.” 

“We are here,” says Chris, straightening, “because you have never played baseball in your life, and because I can’t let you walk into Wrigley a virgin.”

“A _virgin?”_ Piers repeats, incredulous, and maybe Chris flushes a little but if he does he hides it well.

“Can’t dishonor the game. That’s all I’m saying,” he adds before heading into the outfield. “And remember who’s the killjoy here.”

Piers smiles, shakes his head, and follows. 

\---------------------------

“Okay. Ready? It’s coming to ‘ya.”

They’ve been out for at least an hour, and Piers still sucks. But he grits his teeth, and tugs hard on his cap, trying to blink the sun out of his eyes, and yells back. 

“Yeah, let’s have it.”

It’s harder than he expected but easier than he’d thought- which makes sense. It’s teamwork and he knows about teamwork, about watching out for the other guy while making sure you don’t keel over from a knife in the back. Or, you know, keeping an eye on the way the guy throws while making sure the ball doesn’t nail you in the face. 

No wonder Chris likes it- or no wonder Chris liked the B.S.A.A. He’s not sure which came first. 

The ball comes at him and he barely raises his mitt in time to stop it. And even when he catches it, the momentum of his own surprise carries him backwards a few steps, staggering to keep his balance. 

“Nice save,” Chris says, scrutinizing him from twenty feet away. 

He brings his mitt back, angled underhand, then opens it as he swings his arm forward, sending the ball bumping along the ground back to Chris. They’d decided that way was gonna be easiest for him- having just one arm to catch and throw had been a problem for about five minutes before they’d figured it out. _Maybe you’ll be able to throw overhand like that once you get good,_ Chris had said, and Piers had agreed partly to see Chris’s smile peek out again and partly because it wasn’t such a crazy idea, after all. Not like the crazy ideas they’d had back in the old days- _let’s torch the suckers,_ or _I’m tired of waiting, let’s just waste ‘em._ The times when Chris had looked at him and he’d looked at Chris and Chris had said, _you thinking what I’m thinking?_

“Hey,” says Chris, now, with a baseball in one hand and a mitt in the other. Now- not then, when he would’ve cocked his head- _you thinking what I’m thinking?_ And Piers would’ve said, _yes, sir,_ and slammed another round of ammo into his gun and followed Chris wherever he was going. Hell and back, _yes, sir, I’m right there with you, Captain._

“Hey. What’s going on, in that head of yours?”

Piers shrugs. “Nothing.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat a little. “So how’d you get into baseball?”

Changing the subject, the way Chris always had. Bugging him about the last mission he’d been on- _just some work in Africa- nothing interesting. Hey, did you ever find out about that rumored strain in India?_ Finding out that he had a sister, asking why he hadn’t mentioned it before- _never thought it was important, guess it slipped my mind. You got an extra pistol on you, Nivans?_ Wanting to know who the brown-haired girl in the picture on his desk was. _No one, Piers. You’re dismissed._

Chris had been a master at it and he knows the tricks of the trade, knows that there’s more going on in that head of his than he’ll ever let on. But he doesn’t push him. Doesn’t ask again. Instead he lets it go, and takes the door Piers has conveniently opened.

“My dad taught me,” he says, throwing the ball back again. “One of my earliest memories, actually. Me and Claire, and Dad, out in the backyard. The mitt was probably twice the size of my head, kept falling off. But Dad never took any shit, from anyone. We must have stayed out there for hours, until Claire and I could catch without flinching.”

The corner of Piers’ mouth lifts; the baseball bounces back along the dusty ground. “Is that what this is? You planning on taking me out in the backyard to get some father-son time?”

Chris looks at him strangely, for a few, long seconds. Then cracks a smile, flipping the ball back into his mitt. “I’m too young to be your father, Piers,” he says. But the smile doesn’t reach his eyes and Piers gets it.

_That’s not what we are._

Chris might try to make light of it but that’s not what they are, and it’s not what they’ve ever been. Maybe with Finn, he’d been a parental figure of sorts. But never with Piers.

The question isn’t what they _aren’t,_ anyway.

They stay out for another half hour or so, the light behind the rusty bleachers being slowly enveloped in the skyline. And when the late July heat begins to fade into the night chill, the wind biting gently at the back of your neck, Chris calls it quits. 

“You did pretty good,” he tells Piers, “for a first-timer.”

“A cripple first-timer,” Piers corrects him. “I gotta get extra points for that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

Chris guns the engine, and Piers digs around for his iPod. 

Because if he likes Springsteen, Chris does too.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NO PIERS DON'T BREAK THINGS
> 
> Something weird is up with Piers. Chris doesn't seem to notice.

_He’d always hated the ocean._

_The sand gritty and irritating in your eyes, the burn of your cool soles against the scorching ground. The brackish taste of salt in your mouth, the piercing cries of the gulls overhead._

_And the waves. Squeezing the life out of you. Spitting you to the surface only to drag you back down again._

_Water swirling around him, the rush and roar in his ears. Pressure increasing, bearing down on him, crushing his skull and his shoulders and his lungs. When he opens his mouth to scream, white froth replaces sound as the seawater pours down his throat, burning as it goes._

_When he finally starts to pass out, it feels like heaven. And at first, somewhere in the back of his fractured mind, he thinks he might be dying._

_But he’s not._

_He doesn’t remember breaking the surface of the water but he knows what it must have looked like, to the fishermen passing by. Half-human, the rest of his flesh mangled and mutated and preserved beneath the oily solution slicked over his entire body- a last gift given by the virus that saved his life as well as his Captain’s. His clothes, eaten away by salt, dangling off of him, the remaining shreds of fabric held together by a few pieces of thread._

_Like something out of a nightmare._

_Like something out of this nightmare._

_The fishermen reach down with their hooks, the sharp ends digging into his skin. At first their exclamations are indistinguishable: spoken too fast, in a language that he doesn’t understand. But then there’s familiar voices- and Piers looks up to see their faces, glimmering above him, leaning over the railing of the ship with their hooks in hand._

_“Leave him,” Jake Muller says, peering down at him with disgust curling his upper lip. “You think anybody could save this ugly son of a bitch?”_

_“It’s not worth it,” Sherry Birkin murmurs, pulling her hook back up with a shake of her head. “You’re not worth it.”_

_“She’s right,” says Agent Leon Kennedy, unremorseful and eyes narrowed. “I don’t see how helping you is good for the country.”_

_“Wait,” says Piers. “Please.” He doesn’t want to die._

_But they all pull their hooks up. Jake. Sherry. Kennedy. And the others. Finn McCauley, and the rest of their old team. Ada Wong, or whoever the hell it was that they saw hit the pavement after the fall._

_The worst is Chris. And he’s the last to go, his hook catching on the little bits of clothing still clinging to Piers’ body, expression bewildered and guilty and sad._

_“Chris,” Piers pleads. “Wait, please. Captain-”_

_“Sorry,” he says, and looks away. “I’m sorry.”_

_And then he’s gone. And it’s just Piers, and the ocean, and the birds circling above him, waiting for the light to leave his eyes._

_The waves rise higher. Squeezing the life out of him. Spitting him to the surface only to drag him back down again. Water swirling around him, the rush and roar in his ears. Pressure increasing, bearing down on him, crushing his skull and his shoulders and his lungs._

_He opens his mouth to scream and white froth replaces sound as the seawater pours down his throat, burning as it goes. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knows it’s a dream. But that doesn’t stop the panic flooding his brain, the urge to get out, get up, survive._

_He’ll survive. And he’ll kill anything that gets in his way._

\---------------------------

Days Until The Game: T-18 and counting.

It’s the phone that wakes Chris, sprawled out on the couch, snoring.

_Brrrrinnng._

“Hmm.”

_Brrrrinnng._

“No. Fuck off.”

_Brrrrinnng._

“Ah…god damn it.”

He pushes himself up. Runs a hand through his hair, digs into the corners of his eyes with the backs of his palms. Picks up the phone.

“The fuck do you want.”

 _“Chris,”_ she says, _“is that really necessary?”_

He almost drops the phone. 

“Jill?”

_“Better believe it. You haven’t called me in half a year, you big jerk.”_

He rubs the back of his neck. “It’s…good to hear from you,” he says hesitantly.

_“Yeah,” _she replies, _“and it’s good to know that you’re not a rotting corpse. Retired? I mean, I was surprised...but you know what, you deserve it. Still, the BSAA is pretty protective of you, even if you're out of the business. You know how hard it was to convince them that I needed your number to talk to you, not to hack into your accounts? They still don’t trust me, Chris, and it’s even more difficult to get a mission around here without you to reference me.”___

__“Can’t blame them. You did kinda go AWOL.”_ _

___“Come on, that was ages ago! Oh, and hey- I’m a brunette again. If you care.”_ _ _

__“Nah, blond didn’t suit you,” he assures her. “I’m relieved.”_ _

__Jill laughs as Chris leans back, resting against the couch’s armrest. _“How’ve you been? Heard about the shit you had to deal with in Edonia…I’m sorry, Chris. And the whole China deal…are you holding up okay?”__ _

__“Yeah,” he says- and it’s almost true. Better than anything before, when he’d said yeah and felt that ache, the one just below his chest, where things and places and people cluttered up inside of him, nudging him every time he got too comfortable, or too happy. “Yeah. I’m doing real good, Jill.”_ _

___“Sleeping well?”_ _ _

__“Yeah.”_ _

___“Drinking?”_ _ _

__“Not much.”_ _

___“Get a girl yet?”_ _ _

__Chris smiles and looks down. “Nah, Jill.”_ _

__He can hear her rolling her eyes from across the line. _“Ah, I know you. Not big on the relationship stuff, I get it. But seriously, Chris. When’s the last time you went out with someone?”__ _

__“Dunno.”_ _

___“Well,”_ Jill says, and Chris has been friends with her long enough to know that something's up. _“Why don’t you meet me somewhere. A nice bar. We’ll get a decent meal, something to drink.”__ _

__Chris pauses, then sighs. “Jill.”_ _

___“Grill and the Goat. It’s a really nice place, Chris; you’ll like it.”_ _ _

__“Jill.”_ _

___“Hey, look- it’s not a date. I just want to see you, okay?”_ _ _

__But there’s something else, and Chris can hear the caution in her voice. “Jill, is everything all right?”_ _

___“Yeah, of course. So, are you up for it or not?”_ _ _

__He rubs his forehead. “Yeah, fine.”_ _

___“Good! Good. Tomorrow at 8. You know how to get there?”_ _ _

__“Yeah. But Jill-”_ _

___“I’ll see you, Chris.”_ _ _

__She hangs up first, tapping her fingers against her mouth and staring at her phone._ _

__“You sure this is a good idea?” she asks, and Leon looks up from cleaning his gun._ _

__“It’s the best way to deal with it. Why? You getting cold feet?”_ _

__She tosses her phone down on the table and stands._ _

__“Not a chance.”_ _

__\---------------------------_ _

__Piers doesn’t make coffee that morning._ _

__He’s in the kitchen when Chris drags himself off of the couch, still covering little half-yawns behind his hand. Just sitting there, digging at the wood of the table with one fingernail._ _

__“Morning,” Chris mutters, but there’s no answer, and the silence catches his attention more than a response would have._ _

__“Hey. Piers.”_ _

__He moves over, grabs his shoulder, shakes it a little. “Piers.”_ _

__The sniper looks up, head raised slowly, his eyes blank and vacant. The infected eye, still milky and pale, seems to stare off into space. Looking past Chris, instead of at him._ _

__Chris shakes him again. “Hey. Piers. _Piers._ Come on, you’re scaring me.”_ _

__Piers opens his mouth, closes it again. Glances away, glances back._ _

___“Piers.”_ _ _

__“I broke the bed,” Piers says._ _

__Chris blinks._ _

__“What?”_ _

__“I broke the bed,” Piers repeats, forehead creasing. “I broke your fucking _bed,_ Chris.”_ _

__“You- _what?”__ _

__Piers pushes back his chair. “Look,” he says, striding across the kitchen towards Chris’s bedroom. _“Look-”__ _

__Chris follows him, jogging to catch up. “Piers, seriously. So the springs are getting old; it’s not your fault. It can’t be that…oh.”_ _

__They stand in the doorway, Piers’ jaw tight, Chris staring with his mouth hanging open._ _

__“Oh,” he says again._ _

__The bed is _broken._ The mattress is folded in half, the headboard cracked all the way through. The bedposts have been torn apart, splinters scattered across the carpeted floor. The frame looks about to buckle. _ _

__“I broke the fucking bed,” Piers says softly._ _

__“Holy fuck,” says Chris. “Jesus Christ, you really did.”_ _

__And then he’s laughing, doubled over, hands on his knees, the kind of laugh where you can’t breathe but you can’t stop laughing and you’re not really sure you want to stop anyway- it’s too funny._ _

__Piers stands there uncertainly, glancing from Chris to the remnants of the bed and back to Chris again. “You…you’re not…angry?”_ _

___“Angry?”_ Chris manages, looking up at Piers with tears in the corners of his eyes, grinning wider than Piers has ever seen. “Oh my god, Piers- how- how did-”_ _

__But he can’t finish, because then he’s back to laughing, hiccuping when he tries to stop, wiping at his eyes with his fingers._ _

__But Piers looks worried. “I don’t know. I just woke up, and- and I guess…I must’ve…I don’t know. I remember feeling…I had a nightmare.”_ _

__“So you broke the bed?”_ _

__“I…I guess.”_ _

__Piers can’t bring himself to explain, not now. He looks so different, laughing like this. And Piers can’t ruin it, telling him that he was drowning. That he was dying. That he remembers being ragingly angry- an anger that he couldn’t quite control, or explain._ _

__That Chris chose not to save him._ _

__A hand claps down on the back of his neck and Piers flinches. “Hey,” Chris says, still chuckling, “listen. S’not your fault, okay? And- hell, I haven’t laughed like this in years. So don’t worry about it.”_ _

__Piers nods stiffly, and Chris straightens the rest of the way, unable to wipe the rest of the smile off of his face. “Come on,” he says, shaking his head, backing out of the doorway. “Let’s eat something, I’m starving.”_ _

__“What- what about-”_ _

__“We’ll deal with it _later,_ Piers. It’s not going anywhere.”_ _

__Piers looks back at the disaster dubiously, something pricking at the edges of his consciousness. The splits in the wood, the punctures in the mattress…_ _

__The destruction doesn’t look human._ _

__“You comin’?” Chris calls from the kitchen, voice light and amused. It’s ten in the morning and I want some coffee, damn it.”_ _

__It’s the coffee that pulls him out of the dark thoughts in the back of his head. Coffee, the tone of Chris’s voice, and the promise of having a catch after breakfast._ _


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *wiggles fingers mysteriously* 
> 
> *vanishes before a proper summary can be wormed out of her*

_Days until the Game: T-17_

“Why are we doing this, again?” Jake mutters, puling the meatloaf out of the oven. Sherry’s been teaching him how to cook, and he’s learning. Well…learning slowly. There’s progress, at least- which is better than anything she’d hoped for.

“I’ve told you twice already,” she tells him fixedly, taking the pan from him and carrying it over to the table. 

“Humor me. I’ve forgotten the genius behind the plan.”

He’s got sarcasm in his voice again and so she turns to face him with her hands on her hips. “We’re doing this because I said so. Get the green beans.”

He looks at her sulkily. “Come _on_ \- don’t pull that on me. Sherry, can’t we just…call it off?”

“Jake, it’ll be fun. Anyway, this is what normal people _do.”_

“Since when have we ever been normal, supergirl?”

“Get the beans,” Sherry says again, and she’s got those laser eyes going- the ones that make Jake square his shoulders and give up the fight because he’s pretty sure she’s staring straight into his soul. Something that women just do, he supposes. Whatever. 

Sherry answers when the doorbell rings, her smile splitting her face, almost bouncing on the tips of her feet. “Chris!” she shrieks when she sees him, flinging arms around him and hugging him to her tightly- then moving back to do the same to Piers, who makes awkward eye contact with Jake from over her shoulder. 

“I’m so glad you’re both here,” Sherry sighs, stepping back and eyeing the sniper up and down. “Let me look at you.”

“Couldn’t miss out on the free food,” Chris answers enthusiastically. He grins at Jake, claps him on the shoulder with a “hey, Muller, good to see you.”

“Uh…yeah,” Jake says, looking at him strangely. “Sure.”

There’s something different about Chris, and Sherry starts to notice when Jake shoots her a freaked look. Maybe it’s the way he carries himself- or just the fact that he’s cut his hair? Maybe it’s his clothes- they’re nicer than usual, but she can’t tell for sure, and so instead she watches him as he follows Jake into the dining room, chatting the entire way.

“Ah- hey! Piers, they’ve got a cat! I love cats- what’s its name?”

Jake’s voice is unenthusiastic compared to Chris’s, and the contrast only helps to bring out the change in him. She worries her teeth over her bottom lip, trying to figure it out. 

“Wow,” says Chris, words half-muffled through the walls between them. “You two have got a _great_ place.”

And it comes to her. “He’s happy,” Sherry says out loud, the realization coming like a spark. 

She doesn’t remember that Piers is still standing behind her until he responds. “Yeah,” says the sniper, “he would be.” 

But there’s something bitter in his tone, and she turns to look at him, confusion wrinkling her brow. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

Piers glances away, looks back, unwilling to meet her gaze. “It’s nothing,” he says. “Just- it’s only that-”

“Hey,” calls Chris, sticking his head out into the hallway. “Get in here, you two. I don’t have all night.”

Piers shoulders past her without another word. 

\-----------------------

“So, how late are you guys staying?” Jake asks as they dig in to the food. “Sherry said it was gonna run pretty late.”

Chris sits back with his hands locked behind the back of his head without filling his plate. “Nah- well, Piers might stay a while longer, at least. But I’ve gotta be somewhere in a half hour, and I’m eating there- sorry, Sherry. It came up yesterday; wish I could’ve given you an earlier notice.”

“That’s all right,” she reassures him, patting his bulky arm and reaching past him for the salad. “Where are you going?”

“Eh,” says Chris, waving a hand, “it’s not importa-”

“A date,” says Piers.

Sherry leans forward, raising her eyebrows. “What? Chris, you didn’t tell me…”

He shakes his head. “It’s not like that-”

“It’s a date,” Piers says again, voice hard. “Come on, Chris, you’re taking her to dinner. It’s a date.”

“Hey,” Chris says tersely. “Piers, we- we talked about this.”

The sniper’s face tightens, words clipped and sharp. “Yeah, and apparently you didn’t _listen.”_

Chris looks uncomfortable. Piers is expressionless. And the silence stretches on for ages, building between the two of them, solidifying as Sherry watches. 

“Anyone else go to see that new Marvel movie?” Jake says abruptly, setting his fork down with a loud clatter. “That new X-Men, or something? Fuck, it was weird.” 

Chris blinks, wrenches his gaze away from Piers, clears his throat. “I…hey, yeah, I saw that trailer. Takes place in China, right?” 

“Yeah. Damn, I hate that place- fucking J’avos, you know? Can’t ever think of it the same.”

There’s these moments when Sherry suddenly remembers why she puts up with him.

\-----------------------

Chris leaves early, as expected, with the promise to pick Piers up later on. Piers doesn’t say anything until he hears the truck’s motor fade into the distance. 

“Want some help cleaning up?” he asks Sherry curtly. “I mean, I don’t know how much I could do with one arm, but…”

“That’d be great,” she replies, carrying the dirty plates over to the sink. “Here, I’ll rinse, you put them in the dishwasher. And don’t worry if you drop a few, they’re replaceable.”

Jake slouches in behind them, but Sherry stops him, fingertips touching his chest, brown eyes insistent. “Wait,” she tells him, too quiet for Piers to hear but just firmly enough for Jake to understand and nod, turning and padding off towards the living room, the door clicking shut behind him. 

She turns the tap and they start into a rhythm: rinse, hand off, clattering down in the tray. The steam from the hot water drifts off up towards the ceiling, the light bounces off of the gleam of the metal pans, and for the first few minutes, they work quietly. 

But eventually Sherry breaks the silence. 

“Piers,” she says. “You have to tell him.”

Piers almost drops the plate he’s holding, the wet ceramic slipping through his fingers a few inches before he’s able to tighten his hold on it. “I- I…what?”

Sherry rinses one of the bowls, washing the water around inside before dumping it down the drain. “Does he know?” 

Piers stands there, the plate still in his hands, the water dripping onto his shoes. “What?” he says again, voice weaker now. She turns off the tap and looks up.

“Does he know?” she asks, softer this time, and he sets the plate down.

“No,” he says faintly.

She smiles slightly. “I do.”

Of course she does. She’s like a fucking psychotherapist, reading his mind better than he can read it himself. He’d be angry but he’s too tired- too sick of putting on the outer shell that he’d always had in the service. Putting on the shell and watching things bounce off of it instead of worming its way into him. Having self-control.

Sherry tosses him a rag; he dries his hands. “How long?” she queries, like it’s a normal question.

“Since Edonia,” he says, and Sherry blinks.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

It was so stupid, he thinks, how he’d followed him around. Stupid, and childish. Thinking he could always protect him, cover him- thinking he needed Piers the way Piers needed him. Stupid, waking up in the hospital and trying to say his name. Asking to see him until the doctor stuck him with anesthesia. Hating him for giving up and waiting for him to visit- arguing with him when he did visit and then wishing he would visit again. Blasting Springsteen in the truck. Making coffee in the morning. Buying those fucking baseball tickets, having a game of catch in the outfield. 

“It’s stupid,” he tells Sherry. “It’s so _stupid.”_

“So is what me and Jake have,” she tells him. “But we keep it anyway.”

“Why?” he asks, and he can’t help it if his voice breaks on that one word.

“Because it makes sense.” 

Piers exhales. Sherry leans back against the counter. 

“Piers?”

“Yeah.”

“Come here.”

He lets her hug him. She doesn’t loosen her grip until she feels the tears spatter onto her shoulder. And even then, she doesn’t entirely let go.

\---------------------

Jill is already there, waiting for him as he scans the room for her familiar face.

“Chris!” She waves him down brightly, table set in the far back corner of the room, almost hidden from sight. When he draws near she slides off her chair and puts her arms around him, hugging him close. 

He’s taken aback, slightly confused, patting her back as she squeezes him. Hugging isn’t really Jill’s thing, not usually.

Something pokes him in the back of the neck and he flinches. “Ow! Shit- Jill, too tight- you’re digging your nails into me.”

She laughs dryly and apologetically, drawing back a little. “Oh, god. I’m sorry- I’ve just missed you. Sit down, why don’t you?”

As she slips back into the booth Chris notices that she’s got her gun tucked into the back of her jeans. Always prepared for the worst- that’s his Jill.

“You order already?” he asks, glancing down at his own menu. 

She shakes her head, brushing back a few brown strands of hair impatiently. “Nah, I waited for you. Wanna get a beer before or after we eat?”

“Before,” Chris says, maybe a little too quickly to be considered normal. Jill arches an eyebrow, and he shrugs sheepishly. “Like I said on the phone, earlier…I haven’t had a drink in a while.”

“What,” Jill says, laughing, “are you with one of those self-help programs? Weaning yourself off of the stuff with a monthly plan marked on the calendar?”

He shakes his head, the corners of his mouth tugging up. “Nah. It’s my…my roommate, he’s not really a huge fan of the habit. Trying to get me to kick it for good.”

“Your…roommate,” repeats Jill, something serious flickering in her expression. “Chris, I-”

“May I take your order?” A waiter has made his way to the table at last, and Jill stops short, right in the middle of her sentence.

“Yes, please- just drinks for right now, thanks. I’ll take a Fat Squirrel- you, Chris?”

“Yeah,” he says, drawing the word out and watching her thoughtfully. “I, uh…I’ll have the same.”

“I’ll be right back.” The waiter jots it down and swivels back towards the kitchen.

Jill busies herself with her napkin, folding it and smoothing out the wrinkles, taking much more interest in the creases than in Chris.

“Hey,” he says, “what were you saying before?”

She looks up quickly and flashes him a smile. “Hah- nothing. Hey, why don’t you fill me in on this whole Muller incident? I’ve heard a few rumors that he’s Wesker’s son.”

“Okay,” Chris says slowly. “Yeah…sure.”

Something is wrong. But he lets it go, for now. 

It’s probably nothing to do with him.

\-----------------------

Jake offers to drive Piers home, which is weird.

They don’t talk much, not at first. Jake keeps his eyes on the road and Piers keeps his eyes on the streetlights flashing past. Sherry had suggested that he get an early night. It was probably a good idea- he felt like shit, anyway. She’d been the one to call Chris, left the message on his voicemail that Piers hadn’t been feeling good and that he wouldn’t need to come and get him like they’d originally planned. 

Jake clears his throat. “So…you doin’ all right?”

“Yeah,” says Piers quietly.

He keeps his hands tight on the steering wheel but glances over at the sniper briefly. “If…if it’s okay with me asking, what was the whole argument about? The one at dinner.”

Piers laughs harshly. “We…we had this big fight on the way over. I said it was rude for him to make plans like this and then ditch me and you and Sherry for some girl that he hasn’t seen in years.”

“Yeah?” Jake glances at him again; his jaw is set and clenched.

“Yeah. Told him he was being an asshole.”

Jake’s eyebrows shoot up, trying to imagine insulting Sherry that way. “Huh.” 

“He didn’t really care, I think. Kept telling me that he wasn’t ditching anyone. Got pretty pissed.”

It’s fragile ground, here, and Jake knows it. “Well,” he says carefully, “you gotta see it from another point of view, you know?”

“Which is what?” Piers asks flatly.

“Well…” He shifts in his seat. “That he doesn’t really want to fight with you. He’s just trying to be normal, right? To act normal, do normal things. But…it’s hard to make that switch when you’ve lived the other good half of your life the way we have, and…it’s just harder for some than for others. And it’s better to just…to be patient with them rather then push them to their limits.”

Piers is quiet for a few seconds. 

“Did Sherry tell you to say that?” he asks finally.

“Actually,” Jake says, smirking, “she told me not to bring it up at all.”

\-----------------------

Jill chuckles, beer in hand. “He sounds like a real piece of work,” she tells him. “Even if he is a Wesker, I’d be glad to have him on my team- at least for a few runs. He’d get the job done, am I right?”

Chris drinks long and deep, eyes flickering away for just a moment. He can’t shake this feeling- that there’s something she’s not telling him, that something’s off-key. It’s making him uneasy.

He looks down at his watch. “It’s getting late- don’t you think we should order?”

Jill fiddles with her hair. “Yeah. Sure. I, um…yeah, you know what- I’m not actually too hungry. Why don’t you order, though? They’ve got some real good steak here.”

Chris cracks a smile at that, and she blinks. “What?”

He shakes his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “Ah, it’s nothing. It’s just- the roommate I mentioned, he’s, uh…he’s a big fan of steak.”

Jill’s expression flickers again, and Chris knows he’s not just seeing things this time.

“Jill?”

The same bright smile- fake, too wide- flashes back across her face. “Well, I’m sure he’d love it here, then. Why don’t you take a look at the menu?”

“Jill-”

“The sandwiches are good too, though, so if you’re in that kind of a mood-”

Chris tosses the menu to the side. 

“Okay,” he snaps, “I’m done with the crap. Come on, something’s up.”

She lowers her eyes. Says nothing.

 _“Jill._ Damn it, what’s wrong?”

“What’s _wrong?”_ she repeats, voice suddenly exasperated. “You know me too well, Chris, that’s what’s wrong. And I told him that you did, and that this wouldn’t work- I can’t lie to you, Chris, I _knew_ this wouldn’t work.”

“Woah, woah, woah.” Chris grabs her hand in both of his. “Jill, slow down- what are you talking about?”

She yanks her hand back, plunges it inside of her jacket. For a wild second he thinks she’s about to pull a gun on him- but then she draws her hand back out and it’s not a gun but a…

But a-

“Is that…a blood sample?”

Jill’s eyes are hard. “It’s yours.”

He remembers the prick on the back of his neck, the sharp poke that he hadn’t thought much of. “What, you…you just stabbed me with a fucking needle? What the _hell,_ Jill?”

“I had to make sure you weren’t contaminated.”

“Contaminated?!” He’s growing more and more angry with her- for the secrecy, for the unexplainable way she’s been acting. “Contaminated with _what,_ Jill?”

She sets the sample on the table. “With whatever the hell Piers Nivans has.”

\-----------------------

Jake raises one hand as a sendoff as he pulls out of the driveway. “See ya!” he yells out the window, and then he’s gone, taillights gleaming in the summer darkness. 

Piers takes the back stairwell, treading lightly so he won’t wake the other tenants. Jake was surprisingly good-natured- some of the influence that Sherry’s had on him, Piers supposes. He’s gotten to thinking lately that maybe he’s been wrong about Jake- that their skirmishes were just after-effects of the stress of the job. They’re not that different, really. Both trying to adjust to their new life, and it’s harder than they’d both expected.

He reaches in his pocket for the key to their apartment, digs around a little. But when he reaches the door, he’s surprised to find it already unlocked. 

He hadn’t seen Chris’s truck outside. And he was sure that he’d locked it before they’d headed to Sherry’s. 

It’s instinct that has him checking for a break-in. The door is secure and whole. The doorknob and lock is still intact. There’s no evidence of a pick-

_Wait- there._

A hairpin, discarded on the ground. 

_Well, they’re sure careless._

He’s careful, now, focused. Splaying his hand over the wood of the door and pushing gently, making sure that the hinges don’t squeak as it swings open. Slipping through, he moves quietly- all the techniques of his former life in the service kicking in. 

The apartment is dark. Shadows stretch across the floor from the windows; his eyes adjust slowly in the blackness. Everything’s quiet-

-but then he hears someone moving. 

Just around the corner. A few steps more and he’ll be in sight. 

Piers moves quickly, scanning the room for something he can use. Something heavy, something blunt- he sees Chris’s baseball bat lying just a couple of feet away and lunges for it just as the intruder paces into range. 

_Wham._

One-handed, he swings at their head but misses, and the bat goes crashing into the wall, sending white paint chips flying through the air. The intruder yells out in surprise, voice hoarse, but recovers quickly, stumbling back and righting himself just in time to duck the second swing- this one just inches away from his neck. 

Piers moves fast, backing him into a corner, slashing the bat through the air. “You chose the wrong house to rob,” he growls, raising the bat above his head. 

The bat hits the guy’s shoulder first, then his arm. Piers hears the contact of the wood against flesh again as he swings the bat into the side of the man- a dull _thump_ that brings as much satisfaction as increasing anger.

“Next time?” Piers says, bared teeth white in the darkness. “Don’t go looking for trouble with the BSAA.”

He’s got the burglar’s back against the wall, can hear him breathing hard, doubled over and clutching his stomach. Piers has got him right where he wants him- and he starts to bring the bat down, aimed straight for his skull.

But then things go wrong.

The intruder straightens. His hands snap out, almost inhumanly fast, grabbing the bat and twisting his body, sending Piers slamming into the wall instead, the bat ripped out of his grip as his head cracks against the plaster. 

“You’re forgetting something, Nivans,” he says, tossing the bat away and pulling out a gun instead. “I’m BSAA, too.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't know how well I'm doing...hit a major writer's block but pushed through as well as I could. Is this chapter okay? Tell me if it's okay. If it's not I might re-write it. Meh. :(

Chris stares at Jill.

“Piers isn’t infected with anything,” he says.

"Yes, he is."

“But-” He struggles with the information. “How can you know? How can you be so sure?”

“I’m working with Leon. Someone in the BSAA contacted him about the possibility of a case and we picked it up from there- an agent he knows, trusts."

“On- _on the inside?_ You’re acting like this is some kind of infiltration mission-”

“It is,” Jill says impatiently. “Come _on,_ Chris, you know better than that. Let’s go. Put the pieces together.”

And he does. 

The blood sample. The timing of Jill’s phone call and the date that they’d set. The fact that they’d been at the restaurant for an hour and they still hadn’t ordered anything other than the two beers. It was a mission- separating them, getting Chris alone like this. It _was_ a mission-

And the intended target was Piers.

Piers, who he’d left at Sherry’s. 

“Oh- oh my god.” He stands, chair screeching out behind him. “The agent on the inside-”

“Sherry’s been especially helpful,” Jill says, looking up at him from where she’s still sitting. 

“All those times she took him to coffee-”

“What?” Jill asks, brow creasing incredulously. “You actually thought she was doing it because she liked the kid?”

“He’s not a kid.”

“Of course he’s not- he’s barely even _human,_ Chris!”

“You don’t know that!” he bellows, hands slamming down on the table. A few heads turn, glancing back at them in irritation, but their table is so far out of the way that not too many take much notice. Another set-up by Jill. _Fuck,_ how could he have missed…everything? 

“Why did she send him to me?” Chris demands. “Why did she let me take him in, if she was only in it to take him down?”

“This was never a part of the plan, not originally.” Jill looks at him sadly. “We’ve had an eye on Piers ever since his recovery, Chris, and you can’t blame us. He was clean up until a few weeks ago, we thought the amputation would be the end of it-”

“Answer the question.” 

Jill sighs. “Letting him stay with you? That…that was her choice. A mistake, if you ask me. She never should have let him out of her sight, it only complicated things. But she thought that you could be good for him. That he would heal, being around you.”

“She was right.”

“She wasn’t.” Chris’s tone may be harsh but Jill stays cool. “The coffee sessions she had with him explained a lot about him. You’re clueless about half of who you think you’re covering for.”

He stands there, frozen, as she continues. “For example- did you know about the dreams he had? Extremely terrifying, incredibly vivid? The fact that he’d wake up in the middle of fits of rage- punching holes through the headboard, shredding the mattress? He was able to hide it up until the nightmares started increasing in strength- he destroyed the entire _bed,_ didn't he? And he could’ve wrecked the entire room if he hadn’t been able to snap himself out of it. But that’s the only time he told you, wasn’t it? And only because he couldn’t possibly hide it. He couldn’t trust you, not with all the rest- you’re one of the founders of the BSAA, for god’s sake.”

 _Damn it, Piers!_ Chris never would have turned him in- how could he not have seen that? He wouldn’t have turned on him, not like that.

His knees are weakening; he puts a hand against the wall to steady himself, but Jill’s not done. “And did you know that he’d been having fits during the day, too? Smaller ones, but all the same- urges to go violent on random strangers. On Sherry. On _you._ He was scaring himself.”

“He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Chris, he might not have yet, but we can’t just sit by until-”

“He _wouldn’t hurt anyone.”_

“Chris.” Jill stands too, grasping at his arm. “You’ve seen this before. Maybe not at such a slow development- but think of all the men you’ve lost. The ones that went off the deep end, became monsters-”

“No.”

“It’s the same.” She holds steadfast. “You’re the closest friend I have, and I need you to back me up on this one. We know you’re close to him- and we could benefit _so much_ from having you around on the case. The information you can give us, the faith he has in you-”

“I said no,” Chris says, backing away from her. “No- Piers wouldn’t hurt anyone. He’s human, I know it- I would know better than anyone. And I won’t help you.”

“Listen to me,” she says seriously. “You can’t bring emotion into this. He’s a danger to those around him and we need him removed- what would you do if it was just another case?”

“You think it wasn’t about emotion when I saved _you?”_ Chris cries. “You think it wasn’t about emotion then, Jill? I searched the entire continent of Africa for you- you don’t think that was about _emotion?”_

She softens, shoulders dropping, eyes turning down at the corners. She steps forward, puts a hand on his shoulder. “You know me. You know I wouldn’t do this unless I was certain. We were partners, Chris.”

Only then does he hesitate.

“You…you’re going to kill him.”

“No,” says Jill, shaking her head. “I…we don’t know. We just need to quarantine him. To test a few things-”

“To _experiment_ on him,” Chris says bitterly. “And if he dies, it’s just another casualty, am I right?” Jill doesn’t refute it and he curses helplessly. “I can’t. Jill, he’s…he’s my…friend.”

She smiles sadly. “Sometimes there’s a price to pay for playing the hero.”

He drops his eyes to the floor.

“Hey,” she says. “He would do the same for you.”

There’s a pause in which Chris touches his pocket, the Wrigley tickets still crumpled in the bottom. Given 17 more days they would have been there together, eating chili dogs, betting on the player’s averages, hoping to catch the game ball.

There would be no more lazy mornings, stumbling into the kitchen to find a steaming mug waiting for him. There would be no more Springsteen pounding through the speakers of his truck, windows rolled all the way down, breeze whipping through the front seat. There would be no more suppressed grins, watching him carefully arrange his baseball cap over his hair, watching him squint the sun out of his eyes, watching him watching Chris. There would be no more games of catch in the outfield.

He wonders if he could do it. For society. For the sake of saving lives. That was what the BSAA stood for. They had saved lives. Focusing on the good of the many, not the priorities of the one.

But Chris has always been selfish. And he looks up, and decides.

“No.”

He pushes past her.

“Chris!” she calls after him. “Chris, I’ve been given orders, and I have to follow them.”

“I don’t care what you do,” he growls, heading towards the door.

“You can’t save him, Chris.”

But Chris doesn’t slow, doesn’t look back. 

“Watch me.”

\-----------------------

The gun aims straight at his forehead, cold and unforgiving. His attacker’s hand is steady. 

His eyes focus at last; his mouth goes dry. “What?” Piers croaks. “You’re…BSAA? You- you know me?”

The man’s voice is dark. “Yeah, we’ve been keeping tabs on you for a while. You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

He’s wide-eyed and scared, trying desperately to struggle to his feet. “I- no. Please. You can’t-”

“Stay where you are.” The gun clicks and Piers freezes, breath catching in his throat, body shaking. 

“Please,” he says, voice breaking. “Please- just let me go. They amputated the arm-”

“But the virus is still there, and you know it.” 

_“Please,”_ Piers begs, scrambling backwards until his back presses up against the wall again. The barrel of the gun follows him, the agent’s finger fixed firmly on the trigger. “Please, don’t kill me-”

“We’re not going to kill you,” he tells him, and there’s sympathy in his voice. “Not yet.”

Piers knows about the experiments the BSAA performs. Sherry had been one of the victims, once. She’d told him about it- about the snippets she remembered, at least. The fear, the pain, the way that no one had acknowledged her presence. She had been a thing, in the duration of her time there- a test subject- nothing more, nothing less. 

Sometimes, she’d said, the subjects didn’t make it. And there was usually a reason for that: a constant refusal to cooperate, the state of weakness the experiments put them in…the stamp on the research paper that deemed them too dangerous to society.

“I’m sorry,” the agent says, and he is. “I need to take you in, Nivans.”

He reaches into his jacket for a tranquilizer, the gun still in his other hand, at the ready. Piers closes his eyes, trembling, and opens his mouth, repeating words soundlessly, over and over again, Chris’s voice in his head. _You did a real good thing. A real good thing, Piers-_

“A good thing,” Piers repeats.

“What?” the agent says, pausing with the tranquilizer halfway out of his jacket, but Piers can hardly hear him.

_Yeah- a real good thing. Listen to me, Piers-_

But then Chris’s voice vanishes, replaced by that woman’s clone’s, and it’s so real that he can see her in front of him, black hair stark against her pale face, teeth glinting as she speaks.  
 _But I gotta say, I’d hate to be a part of his team- wouldn’t you, Piers? Thanks for the escort- here, something to remember me by-_

And then there’s a flash and it’s Finn he’s seeing, expression dark and eyes unusually blank. _She was here a minute ago,_ he says, skin already bubbling, growing, expanding, stretching into someone- some _thing_ else. _She was right here, I swear-_

And then it’s not Finn but what Finn used to be, its outer shell sticky with the scraps of the rookie, and it’s starting towards him, advancing menacingly, growling out phrases that he can’t understand, deformed and warped, and the ocean is rushing at him, saltwater pouring down his throat, choking him, blinding him, and he’s drowning. 

Somewhere in the back of his mind he grasps at thin strands of reality, watching the agent’s expression twist into shock as he backs away, gun cocked and loaded and finger around the trigger, shouting.

_“I need back-up! I need back-up, god damn it- get the hell in here-”_

Footsteps, the crash of the door being blown off of the hinges. But then it’s Finn and the ocean again and everything else is forgotten, separate from the turmoil in his mind, and the last thing he remembers before he blacks out is the bright flash from the muzzle of the gun and an unearthly scream. 

Maybe his own, maybe not.

\-----------------------

Jill pulls her jacket tighter around her, the cool summer night breeze picking up, teasing her hair around gently. “How many went after him?” she asks, speaking quietly into the phone. 

_“We sent one squad, all qualified men, good at their jobs-”_

“How many?” Jill repeats. 

There’s a pause. _“Ten.”_

Jill closes her eyes and presses a hand to her forehead, sucking in a deep breath. “Shit.” 

_“You think they’re dead.”_

“I know they’re dead, Sherry. HQ just called in and none of them are responding, it’s radio silence out there. Like they’ve been wiped clear off the map. We should have sent more, at least fifty-”

Sherry sighs. _“Jill, this won’t be easy for you to hear, but I’m still not so sure about all of this. The way Piers acted, the conversations we had-”_

“Your conversations only proved every suspicion we had about him,” Jill tells her. “Please tell me you’re not backing out of this, not now, not like Chris.”

_“He didn’t agree to help?”_

“No.”

 _“Listen,”_ Sherry says, _“I’m only saying that we shouldn’t be taking this so fast. We never should have gone barging in like that, it was a bad idea. It was sloppy and unprofessional and unfair, and it wasn’t the BSAA’s way.”_

“Like you would know anything about our ways-” 

_“I know that Chris never would have given these orders, if he’d been in your place.”_

“But he’s not,” Jill says desperately. “He’s _not_ in my position- he _retired_ and left me to clean up the mess.”

Sherry pauses. _“You and I,”_ she says softly, _“of all people, should know to slow down on this one.”_

“He’s not human,” Jill tries to convince Sherry- or herself, or both. “I have to bring him in.”

 _“Jill,”_ Sherry pleads. _“Just let me find him, let me talk to him. Don’t send another round of soldiers, send me.”_

“He’ll kill you.”

 _“He won’t._ ” Sherry is resolute. _“He’s still in there, Jill, he can still take control. He…he laughs, and smiles, and cries just like any other person on this planet.”_

Jill pinches the bridge of her nose. “How can you be sure?” she asks, voice wavering.

_“He can love, Jill.”_

“I…” she exhales. “Orders. We have orders.”

 _“I have given you everything you ever asked for,”_ Sherry says. _“I’ve carried out every order you’ve given me before now. I’ve listened to you every single time, Jill. Listen to me now, please.”_

There’s a long, heavy pause.

“Fine,” Jill says at last. “Tell me…tell me what you want me to do.”

 _“Wait,”_ Sherry tells her. _“Just wait.”_

\---------------------

Piers isn’t answering his phone, and Chris is frantic. 

“Hey,” he says, the fourth message he’s left in the last thirty minutes. “Hey, Piers- if you get this, just…call me back. And don’t go anywhere, wherever you are- just stay put, okay? I’m- I’m real worried about- about you, so- yeah, call back ASAP.”

He’s speeding again, the old truck muttering under its breath as he pushes it to eighty in a sixty-mile-an-hour zone, heading back towards their apartment as fast as he can. But it doesn’t matter as long as he finds him in time. 

In time for what, he’s not really sure. 

When his phone rings he almost crashes, hands jumping off of the steering wheel automatically, clambering to get the damn thing out of his pocket. “I- hello?” he answers, swerving back into the right lane. 

_“Chris.”_

“Piers? Piers, is that you?”

Piers’ voice is shaky. _“I…I think so.”_

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Piers, where are you?”

_“I don’t know. I don’t know.”_

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Did you-” he clenches the steering wheel, knuckles going white. “Piers, tell me what’s going on. Jill said…said things I’m having trouble believing. Tell me you didn’t hurt anyone, please-”

The voice on the end of the line is having trouble breathing, sucking in huge gulps of air, exhales choked out, panicked. _“I don’t know. Chris, I don’t know-”_

“Where are you?”

 _“Wrigley,”_ says Piers. _“I’m at Wrigley, but Chris, I don’t know how.”_

Chris keeps his voice low and steady. “All right. I want you to stay there, okay? Stay right where you are and stay out of sight, I’m coming to get you.”

But instead of relieved, Piers is desperate. _“No! No- don’t come, Chris, please, don’t come-”_

“Just stay there-”

 _“I’m…”_ Piers stammers. _“I’m- I’m not…”_

“It’s okay,” Chris tells him determinedly. “Whatever you did, it’s okay. We’re gonna figure this out, all right? Stay right where you are. Fifteen minutes, and I’ll be there. Okay, Piers?”

There’s no answer.

“Piers?” Chris says, frantic. _“Piers?”_

The line goes dead.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter is short. Enjoy the angst! :3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also- really appreciating all the feedback. I probably would've dropped this fic a while ago if it wasn't for all your comments! They make me smile and want to give each and every one of you a big fuzzy warm hug. <3
> 
> ALSO. THIS SONG. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n7Zwz-ABXU

Chris pulls into the Wrigley parking lot twenty minutes later. 

The truck screeches to a halt and he jumps out, slamming the door behind him, flashlight in one hand. He scans the lot, breath coming short. “Piers?” he shouts, flipping the flashlight on and sweeping it across the blacktop. _“Piers!”_

There’s no answer. Nothing but the squeal of a second set of tires as another car pulls up next to Chris’s truck. Jake slides out of the front seat, expression set. 

“Chris!”

“Jake.” Chris had called him, not knowing who else to go to, and had managed to explain everything with frantic, rushed fragments of sentences and shaky words. He’d been relieved to find that Jake hadn’t been involved in the scheme- Sherry hadn’t ever talked about it, thank god. “Thanks for coming,” he says.

“Don’t mention it.” Jake’s eyes move over the dark corners of the lot. “He’s a good guy, Chris- even if Sherry thinks it’s a good idea, I’m not about to let some other poor bastard be poked and prodded with needles the way I was. Now come on, we better get looking. It’s a big place; you got any ideas where he’d be?”

Chris tries to slow his racing pulse. “No- I told you, he just said he was here-”

“Call him,” Jake interrupts. “Maybe we’ll be able to hear the ringtone. Let’s split up- I’ll go right, you go left. Keep your phone open and keep calling him. We’ll circle the building, okay? Meet back here.”

Chris nods, flips open his own phone, dials. They set off, Chris handing off the flashlight to Jake and using his screen’s light to brighten the dark areas of the walkway. A couple more seconds, and Jake’s out of sight. 

Chris yells out Pier’s name, dialing and redialing and listening, holding his breath. He ducks under a metal beam, the answering machine clicking and playing. 

_“Hey, it’s me. Call back another time or leave a message, I’ll try and get back-”_

Chris hangs up, redials. Hangs up, redials. He rounds another corner- and finally hears a familiar tune, accompanied by a familiar voice- one that he knows from those truck rides, him with both hands on the wheel, Piers with his fingers drumming against his knees, glancing at him and glancing away, with both of them too self-conscious to meet each other’s gaze but feeling it all the same, that damned song on repeat and neither of them making any move to change it. 

_“Darling, I’ll wait for you. And if I should fall behind-”_

“Piers!” Chris can make out a faint glow issuing from a corner of the building’s framework. The sniper’s managed to worm his way into the smallest space he could, knees drawn up to his chest, head resting against the brick wall. His eyes are closed and for a second, Chris can’t breathe. 

But as he draws nearer he can see the rise and fall of Piers’ chest- along with other things. Blood smeared across his shoulder. A see-through, glue-like substance coating his right side, where his missing arm had been. 

And Piers’ phone is still ringing, Springsteen’s lyrics muffled but distinguishable. _“I’ll wait for you. And if I should fall behind, wait for me. Yeah I’ll wait for you-”_

Chris snaps his phone shut. The song stops.

“Jake!” he shouts. “I found him, I’ve got him.” He hears Jake respond distantly as he crouches down, touching Piers’ good shoulder. “Piers. Piers-”

The sniper stirs and wakes in one flinching start, then cries out, eyes flying open and widening, shrinking away from Chris, his good hand pressing hard against the wall behind him. “Please,” he gasps, “please don’t-”

Chris’s chest tightens. “No, _no-_ Piers, it’s me. Hey, you’re gonna be okay, all right? You’re gonna be fine-”

The alarm in Piers’ expression fades slowly and he goes limp, staring up at Chris with glazed eyes. “I…C-Chris?”

“I got you,” Chris says, bending down to slip one arm beneath his back with the other supporting his legs, lifting him up, carrying him. “You’re okay, I got you.”

Jake’s footsteps rebound off of the corridor- he comes into sight, his eyes narrowing as he sees Piers’ condition. “How is he?”

Chris shakes his head- he doesn’t know. Piers’ head lolls against his chest, body still so light from his initial recovery. 

“Chris?” Piers mumbles, skin pale and slippery and unnatural. “Chris?”

“You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

“What’s wrong with me?” the sniper asks, voice small, fading. “Chris?”

But Chris doesn’t have an answer. 

They book a motel under a fake name and pay for it in cash. It’ll be harder for the BSAA to track them if they don’t use credit, Jake says. Chris is, for once, relieved that Muller’s had this kind of upbringing. 

Jake helps Chris settle Piers on the bed, sprawled out and unconscious. “Don’t worry,” he says, giving the sniper a quick once-over, “there’s nothing wrong with him. Just exhausted, probably, and in shock- if what you’ve told me is true, then it’s no biggie.”

“But the blood-” Chris protests, fingers smoothing over the scarlet stain on Piers’ chest.

“It’s not his,” Jake replies quietly, and gives Chris a few moments to process what that could mean.

Chris sits on the edge of the bed. He’s not really sure if his knees will hold out much longer anyway.

“I’m taking off,” Jake tells him, moving towards the door. “I’m going back to Sherry.”

Chris looks up at him in surprise. “What?” 

“She’ll listen to me. Or I’ll bargain something out. You’ll be hunted otherwise, you know that.”

“Jake-” 

“It’ll be fine.” Jake says shortly before snapping the door shut behind him, not because it actually will be fine but because it’s supposed to make things better, saying it. 

Piers is still a mess and Chris does his best to clean him up, stripping him to his waist, sponging off the blood and whatever the hell the glossy sheen coating his right side is. The sniper shifts in his sleep as he works, issuing a few pained moans in the back of his throat as the cloth passes over the stump on his shoulder but he doesn’t wake again, and Chris wrings out the blood in the sink, watching it swirl and disappear down the drain. 

When he’s finished he pulls up a chair and sits beside the bed, the bags under his eyes heavy and the creases lining his forehead deep. 

“They had a funeral for you, you know,” he says finally, because it’s too quiet. “At Arlington. Big. Fancy. And I didn’t want to go but I did.”

The palm of his hand presses against the sniper’s temple. His thumb rubs against the tips of his hairline. 

“You got all those military honors. Purple heart. Some kind of marksmanship ribbon. The works. They played taps. Gave a speech about sacrifice. Left the casket open for a viewing. It was empty, Piers. They had a fucking empty casket. They looked for your body for a month before staking you out as KIA and they still gave you a fucking empty casket. Something about closure, I guess.”

He wipes his face with the back of his free hand, the other still resting against Piers’ cheek. “God, I- I barely held it together then, you know? I had to watch you die for them and then I had to watch them mark your grave and now- and now they’re saying that they’re taking you again?”

He laughs, bitter and half-choked. “Not on my watch. Never on my watch, Piers. I’m sick of following orders. I’m sick of the BSAA. I just…I’m…”

He’s tired.

And it means so much more than what it sounds. He’s tired of the BSAA’s plots and deceptions, of the insanity of bioterrorism, and of losing people to that insanity. He’s tired of running in circles. With Piers, with himself. 

He’s tired, and he wonders if Piers is, too. 

He pulls his hand back. “Night,” he says, wrestling control of himself, wanting to touch him but turning away instead, shutting up because talking to yourself is pathetic.

And Piers lies there, half-conscious and not quite sure if he’s dreaming, listening to Chris’s shaky sighs and deep breaths and wishing he hadn’t turned away at all. 

\---------------------

_Days until the Game: T-16 and counting._

Piers wakes up in a familiar position. 

He’s lying on a bed- soft, comfortable, on his back with his one arm slung tucked under his armpit. And Chris is sitting in a plastic chair right next to the bed with his head resting over his folded arms, snoring. 

Piers lies back down. Closes his eyes again. They’ve got a while until the game and he wonders if Chris would take him out for another catch today. They haven’t had a catch in a few days. 

It hits him hard and all at once. Maybe it’s the smell of the place, or the feel of everything that makes him think again. Or maybe it’s the fact that the only bed he could ever imagine sleeping in is in Chris’s apartment, still lying on the floor in pieces- and so who’s bed _is_ he in, and where, and-

His eyes snap open- he’s not at home, after all; the room is unfamiliar and far too cheaply furnished. A motel, maybe- in Chicago, or in a different city? He doesn’t know. It hits him hard, and all at once, and he panics.

_I’m BSAA too-_

_We’ve been keeping tabs on you for a while-_

_We’re not going to kill you._

_Not yet._

He scrambles out from under the covers, hands shaking, heart pounding. He pulls his discarded shirt over his head, bloodstains still visible, searches the room for his shoes- not knowing where he’s going to go but understanding that he needs to get _out,_ needs to go somewhere safe, far from anyone who could possibly know him or know what he is, what he’s done-

His hand is on the doorknob when he hears the sharp intake of breath from behind him. 

“Piers?” Chris says, still clearing the sleep from his eyes with one hand and attempting to straighten his tousled hair with the other. “Hey- I…where’re you going?”

He doesn’t want to turn around. Doesn’t want to see the look Chris has to be giving him- one of fear, maybe, or wariness, mixed with some kind of sick anticipation or disappointment. 

He doesn’t want to turn around. He turns anyway- and Chris is standing there, shirt wrinkled, eyes bleary, expression unexpectedly…clear. Blank. Open. “Where’re you going?” he asks again. Honestly confused- as if Piers couldn’t have a reason _for_ leaving, as if there could not possibly be anywhere else for Piers to be, or anyone else to be with. 

“Chris,” he says, feeling oddly strangled. “Leaving, I’m- I’m leaving.”

Chris shakes his head to clear it. “What?” he says. “Why?”

If it had been out of the context that it’s in Piers would have laughed. “Why?” he repeats, incredulous, unbelieving. _“Why-_ Chris, I just committed _murder-”_

Chris stands, moving towards him, shaking his head again, this time with purpose. “You don’t know that-”

“I know enough,” Piers snaps. “Even in the chance that I _didn’t_ kill them- I…I sure as hell know that I could have.”

Chris pauses, hesitates. “What do you remember?” he asks quietly, and Piers falters. 

“I remember that I- that I was angry. Really angry. And there were…voices, in my head, and…” He trails off, eyes flickering away from Chris’s.

“What?” Chris pushes. “And what?”

“And one of them was yours,” Piers admits. “There was you, and there was Finn, and Ada, and…and I was so _angry,_ Chris, and I- I don’t even know why. The BSAA agent, he- he had a gun to my head, and I think he fired, but…but it never hit me, Chris. I must have been three feet away- and it never even hit me.” 

Chris stops a few feet away from him, words spoken low and firmly. “Okay- listen to me. I told you this before and I’m telling you again- we’re gonna figure this out, all right? And you’re gonna be fine-”

“I’m a freak,” says Piers incredulously. “Chris, I’m a _freak,_ I’m barely even hu-”

“Don’t say it!” Chris barks- loud. Harsh. Voice steel and iron, the voice he used in the service, the _drop and give me twenty,_ the _fall in line, soldier,_ the _you’ll do what I say_ voice. “Don’t you dare say it! God damn it, Piers, this whole thing is fucked up but you know what? You are…you are… _anything_ but a freak, and we are gonna set this thing straight-” 

But Piers doesn’t budge. There’s his instinct, right where it belongs, nagging at him, _hey, kid, buck up- Captain’s orders, now-_ but he shoves it aside. He quells it this time, pushing it into submissiveness, and straightens and backs away. 

“I’m leaving. You can’t stop me, Chris.”

His mouth opens, closes, like a fish out of water. “I-”

“Don’t you _get it?”_ Piers cries. “Can’t you get it through your skull? I’m leaving, and I don’t want you to follow me, or look for me, or-”

“No- Piers, just-” Chris stutters, dumbfounded. He takes another step forward, then another, slow, careful, like Piers could vanish in front of him if he moves too fast. “No, just- just let me help-”

“I can’t,” Piers says, voice slipping and revealing his uncertainty, breaking just a little. “I’m not-”

Chris reaches out, fingers locking around his shoulder. “You’re human. You’re human, okay? _This-”_ he tightens his hold, shaking him- _“this_ is human. Freaks…freaks and monsters don’t listen to Springsteen, all right? They don’t make coffee, they don’t play baseball-”

Piers swallows. “Chris-”

“You know, the first time Sherry came by?” Chris says, rambling frantically. “She found my mitt, and she asked me if I played, and- and I asked her who the fuck I was supposed to throw to. Well I…I throw to you now, okay? And I’m not…I’m not…I can’t- they can’t have you, all right? They can threaten me all they want, but they’re not having you.”

“I might have _killed_ a squad of BSAA troops and you’re telling me I can’t leave because you need someone to _throw_ to?” Piers asks, voice wavering.

“Yeah. I mean- _no!_ I-” He curses under his breath, hands gripping at Piers’ shoulders, trying to look him in the eye. “I just…Piers, listen to me-”

Piers reaches out behind him. Grasps the door handle. Turns.

It opens, and Piers steps away. Chris’s hands are suddenly grasping at air, the sniper is halfway out the door, and Chris stands there helplessly, trying to bring something- _anything_ \- to mind that’ll stop him. 

Nothing comes, and the door slams shut.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh fuck it this is just a sad chapter and I'm sorry

The minute Jake walks through the door, he knows something’s up.

Chris is sitting at the motel room’s desk, chin tucked against his chest, arms folded up tight under his armpits, gazing distractedly at the wall. 

“Chris?” Jake asks, but he doesn’t get a response and he steps forward, irritated. “Hey, man- snap out of it. I went back to Sherry’s but she wasn’t there- I dunno where she could’ve gone off to but we gotta find her, okay? We can fix it, get her to drop the hunt, maybe.”

Chris doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even move. 

_“Hey.”_ Jake takes another step towards him. “Hey, I’m talking to you. You gotta get on board with me here now, or you’re gonna be in deeper shit than you already-”

But he cuts himself off there, looking around suddenly. “Hey. Chris- where’s Nivans?”

Chris doesn’t budge.

“Chris. Where the hell is Nivans?”

When Chris speaks his voice is hoarse. “Not here.”

 _“What?_ Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Chris, god damn it-”

“It’s the truth.” He glances up at last, face drained of energy. “If I knew I wouldn’t be here.”

“Shit. _Shit.”_ Jake paces. “How? Did he just- just slip by you, or something? Did he pull something- some kind of trick to escape, or what? Did he-”

“It’s my fault,” says Chris.

“What?”

“I didn’t know what to say.” His expression is miserable, tired. “He said he was leaving, and I just didn’t know what to say.”

"Okay- get in the truck," Jake orders, grabbing Chris's keys. "Come on, get in the truck, we'll search the city, find him-" But Chris doesn't move. Just sits there, rubbing at his hip with one hand, staring into space.

Jake stops. 

"Chris," he says. “What happened?"

“Nothing,” Chris says. “Nothing.” 

\---------------------

_Piers reaches out behind him. Grasps the door handle. Turns._

_It opens, and Piers steps away. Chris’s hands are suddenly grasping at air, the sniper is halfway out the door, and Chris stands there helplessly, trying to think of something to say that’ll stop him._

_The door slams shut._

_The door slams shut, and Chris loses it._

_Every bit of sanity he’s ever possessed, every filter he’s ever placed on himself, every ounce of common sense. He loses it, and he yanks the door back open, and he follows him._

_“Piers! Piers, listen-”_

_But Piers is done with listening- doesn’t turn, doesn’t slow. And Chris breaks into a run, frantic to catch up with him, skidding to a stop as he comes up close behind, grabbing his arm, twisting him around to face him. “Wait! Wait- wait, okay, just-”_

_“There’s nothing you can say to make me change my mind,” Piers says._

_“I know,” says Chris._

_He’s cradling Piers’ face in his hands, fingers pressed against his jaw, close up against him, standing in the motel parking lot, and it just happens. Kissing him- feeling him go stiff, one good arm frozen at his side, clumsy and awkward but slow and measured, and it feels good, and he doesn’t want to take it back._

_“I don’t care,” Chris tells him after he’s pulled back, voice shaky in his throat and hands shaky against the edges of Piers’ jaw. “I don’t care- I don’t care if you’ve only got one arm. I don’t care if you tore the fucking bed apart. I don’t care if you- if the virus…or about those BSAA agents-”_

_Piers expression is tight and stony and detached and Chris’s eyes widen, just a little, his grip on the sniper loosening._

_“It doesn’t matter,” he says, tripping over words, trying to explain himself, to justify his actions, doubting himself, hands shaking worse now. “It doesn’t matter- right? The BSAA, the virus- they don’t matter. I’m gonna watch out for you, and- and you can- you can watch out for me, too, maybe. Piers, please- look at me, all right? It doesn’t matter- we…we can take care of each other. Right?”_

_“No,” says Piers. Slowly. Quiet. “I…no.”_

_Chris breaks a little more than he was already broken, and the sniper looks straight at him while he breaks, eyes hazel-green and cold. “No,” he says, more firmly this time, “it won’t work. It would never work.”_

_“Oh,” says Chris. “Oh. Okay.”_

_“It won’t work,” Piers repeats. “It’s stupid. And I can’t.”_

_“Okay,” Chris says again, but it’s not. “Okay.”_

_He lets Piers go, this time around. There’s no real reason to follow him. Not that he can think of- not anymore, anyway._

\---------------------

Piers hitchhikes a few miles towards the outskirts of the city before he gets the message. Sitting in the passenger’s seat of a guy driving a tiny, cramped Honda Fit, his phone buzzes in his pocket, and he freezes, hand halfway to pulling it out. 

The text could be from anyone, he tells himself, but there’s only one person he’s hoping it’s from- a dumb, ridiculous hope that he tries to squash with narrowed eyes and a scowl. And he stays that way, indecisive and uncertain, until the driver looks over at him, arching an eyebrow.

“You gonna brood about that some more, or grow some balls and read the fucking thing?” he asks, and Piers stares at him in surprise before working up the nerve and flipping the phone open, eyes widening when he sees the sender’s name. 

_To: Piers_

_From: Sherry_

_Message: Meet me for coffee- usual place, now. Just want to talk. You and me, no one else. I’m not going to bring you in- and that’s a promise._

_Prove you’re still who I think you are._

He sits there, thinking. Looks out the window. Looks back to the phone. Looks over at the driver. Looks back at the phone.

Finally he decides. 

“Hey,” he says, clearing his throat. “Hey, can you- just drop me off right here?”

The driver looks at him a little strangely. “Here? You sure? It’s not really known to be residentially friendly, kid.”

“Just do it. Please.” The words come out a little harsher than he expected and he backtracks quickly. “I just…I realized there’s something that I need to do. I gotta turn around, and…well, I know it’s the opposite direction of where you’re headed.”

“I’ll take you,” the driver says, and waves off Piers’ protests. “Man, there is absolutely no way I’m letting you off here. Gangs around here will kick your little skinny ass to hell and back before you can say a word- don’t you know anything?”

He relents. “I…Thanks, I guess.”

“No problem. New guy like you? Gotta have someone to watch out for ya.”

Piers swallows hard, his eyes turning down at the corners. “Yeah?”

“Well sure,” the driver says, grinning and making a speedy U-turn, “but good luck finding someone willing. You got a stick stuck so far up your butt that it’s gonna take years to work out.”

“Huh,” says Piers. 

“Damn straight. And Jesus Christ, it doesn’t kill a man to smile. Where’re you headed?”

Piers tells him, and the little engine roars to life. 

\---------------------  
Sherry finds him at once. She’s waiting by the door as he walks in, hand snapping out, grabbing his forearm, making him jump. “Piers,” she says, relieved and grateful. “I…thought you wouldn’t show.”

“Well I did,” he says. Maybe just a little brusquely. “What do you want?”

She sighs at his tone. “To…apologize. To have coffee. To talk to you. Let’s sit.”

He lets her lead him to a table, out of the way and cozy, after she’s stopped by the counter to ask for two French roasts. She eases into her chair comfortably, glancing at him apprehensively. “Are you hungry?” she asks. “Do you wanna split something?”

Piers shakes his head. “Sherry-”

“Look,” she says. “I’m just trying to make it up to you, here.”

“You broke into my- into Chr…into someone’s home,” Piers snaps. “You sicked the BSAA on me.” She reaches across the table to take his hand, but he pulls it back before she can touch him. “I had something good going. You fucked it up.”

Sherry leans forward in her chair. “The way we did things,” she says, “was a mistake. I knew you were a ticking time bomb and I assumed the best way to take care of it was by setting it off.”

“I was a _time bomb?”_

“No, you _are_ a time bomb,” she counters him. “And you know it.”

Maybe she would have said more, but the coffee arrives at their table, hot and steaming and familiar. Piers taps his fingers on the edge of the mug, watching the dark liquid swirl around inside, but pulls them back when they start to scald. 

“You’re right,” he says finally, quiet and weary. “About the time bomb.” He bows his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “But I don’t understand why. Why is it always _me?”_

“What do you mean?” 

“I always took the bullet,” Piers says. “It was _me-_ it was always me. Chris might’ve tried, but it was me that ended up having to take the bullet, and I did- it was me sticking my neck out, me in the hospital, me turning myself into a fucking monster, always, and for him. I took the bullet-”

“I know you did,” Sherry tells him, soothingly, reassuring. But he doesn’t stop.

“When we first met Ada, she killed all our men- every single one of them- and left us to watch. And they turned into freaks and Chris wouldn’t _leave,_ because he’s too fucking stubborn, and then they came after us, and I was telling him to leave but he wouldn’t. And one of them- it would’ve slaughtered him, if I hadn’t been there. He’s too fucking stubborn. I dragged him out with all those _things_ right on my ass, and god damn it, he never even said thank you.”

He takes a breath, sucking air into his lungs, eyes burning. “And I went to the hospital they stuck him in every fucking day, Sherry. I sat by his fucking bed and slept on a fucking bench and ate the fucking hospital food every single fucking day. And when they found me, after China? He didn’t visit for weeks.”

“Piers-”

“It’s not fair,” he says. “It’s not _fair._ I took the bullet every single time back then and half the time he never even noticed and _now_ he thinks it’d be a good idea?” 

“What’s a good idea?” Sherry reaches for his hand again and this time he doesn’t pull away. “Piers, what’s a good idea?”

Piers looks at her wretchedly. “I’ve been watching out for him ever since we met,” he says weakly. “And _now_ he thinks it’d be a good idea, when I can’t anymore.”

Sherry’s brows crease in confusion at first, but her mouth falls open when she understands. “Oh, Piers,” she sighs, tightening her fingers around his. 

“I always had his back,” he manages, blinking hard. “I always took the bullet- but I never _cared._ Fuck, you know the truth? It didn’t matter if he never said thank you, or if he never noticed. Long as he was still breathing, you know? I used to watch out for him, and now I’m afraid to.”

It’s a rare moment when Sherry doesn’t know what to say. But here, she’s at a loss for words, holding Piers’ hand and watching him crack, getting a little more tired all the time.

“I can’t,” Piers says. “I can’t _hurt_ him, Sherry, I won’t. I told you it was stupid but I’d do anything not to hurt him.”

Sherry translates, sipping at her coffee, inside her head. It’s not that he doesn’t want Chris. He just doesn’t want to find Chris at the other end of his fury, his rage- the anger that he can’t control, that’s a part of the virus and a part of him but not a part that he can explain or understand or even begin to harness. 

_I can’t hurt him,_ he’d said. But really, it’s that he can’t stand to know that he has the power to.  
Sherry stirs her coffee slowly. “Come with me,” she says. “I’ll take you to the BSAA-”

Piers stiffens immediately, spine rigid, jaw hardening. But Sherry keeps a firm hold on his hand.

“If they do anything to you,” she tells him, “if they even touch you, I’ll shut down the project. But come with me, and we’ll go to the people I’m working with, and we’ll figure it out. Maybe find a cure.”

Piers shakes his head, distraught, his laugh strained and harsh. “A cure? You really think-” 

She’s honest. “It’s a long stretch. But what other choice do you have?”

He hesitates. 

“Take the bullet out,” Sherry says softly. “You can’t hurt anyone this way.”

“Okay,” he says, and breaks the rest of the way, tired and just needing it to be over, and it’s not okay but he says it anyway. “Okay.” 

There’s just that one thing, though, and it’s nothing to do with cures or breaking or being tired. It’s the look on Chris’s face when he’d heard Piers say _no-_ all quiet and final and keeping it together for his sake because he’d never hurt him, not if he could help it. And Chris’s _okay-_ even though it wasn’t, just like now- _okay,_ giving up, stepping aside, watching him walk away.

“Let’s go,” Sherry says, getting to her feet, and he pushes back his chair and follows. Because at least with this, there’s no one to face, and no one to answer to.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ASLDKJFLSADJGLSHJGLSJGLS!!!
> 
> BEST. SONG. EVER. FOR. THESE. TWO. PLEASE. PLEASE. FUCKING. LISTEN.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgMCTHTJov4

_Days Until the Game: 7_  
  
Nine days.  
  
Jake has tried to call, tried to stop by, leaving voicemails-  _I can't find Sherry, have no lead on Piers, I'm freaking out here, Chris-_  pounding on the apartment door-  _god damn it, I know you're in there._ Chris doesn't answer the phone, doesn't let him in- seeing Jake, talking to Jake would only remind him of what he's trying to forget.   
  
So instead he spends it locked in his flat, drinking, smoking, watching the hours tick away on the clock. He watches cheap soap operas. Skips through ads and clicks through channels.   
  
He's so, so tired.  
  
And he always ends up pausing on one station.   
  
 _"It's Rizzo, up to bat. Done well this season, a real asset for the team so far. Pitcher winds up...a little high, and that'll be 0 and 1. He'll go again...and- oh, man! That's up there, and- yes, it's outta here! Fantastic hit by Rizzo-"_  
  
Chris turns off the TV. Nine days, and he has no one to go with and no one to throw to.   
  
So he does what he always does when he's at the end of his rope, and calls her.   
  
\---------------------------  
  
Nine days.   
  
And after everything that's happened, it turns out that he doesn't really care what happens to him anyway. Sherry had promised that they wouldn't touch him- but after a while they gave up on the  _look don't touch_  approach and Piers gave up on the false reality that he had any say about any of it from the beginning.  
  
God, he's tired.  
  
His captors poke and prod, with Sherry keeping the experiments at a minimum, and Piers is isolated and lonely. He doesn't talk much. Just keeps quiet. Letting them do their job.   
  
Despite Sherry's genuinely best efforts, sometimes the testing hurts. The different combinations of numerous chemicals on his body, trying to bring out and duplicate the raged, panicked black-outs that the mutation imposes on him.  _If we can recreate the cell-structure of the mutation, we can find a cure,_  they tell him- and he believes them, because he has no other choice and no other options.   
  
He's at the end of his rope. And usually, when he is, he would do what he always does, and go to Chris.   
  
But like he said, he's got no other options. So he stays, locked in a white room, waiting for them to find a way to fix him or find a way to get rid of him.   
  
Nine days, and he thinks about Chris, with no one to go with and no one to throw to.  
  
\---------------------------  
  
 _Days Until the Game: 6_  
  
Claire doesn't lecture, doesn't interrogate him. She just comes when he calls, like family should.  
  
"I'll stay for two weeks," she tells him, hugging him close. "And longer if you need me to."  
  
Chris hugs her back, her hair soft against his cheek. "Wanna go to a baseball game?" he asks. "I have tickets."  
  
"Wouldn't miss it," Claire says, and then draws back, studies him. "You gonna tell me what's wrong, or shouldn't I ask?"  
  
Chris goes quiet. She doesn't ask.  
  
\---------------------------  
  
Sherry tells him that they think they've got something.   
  
 _"It's a branch of the formula we used last time," she says. "We'll perfect it and have it ready for testing by this afternoon."_  
  
He nods at her through the glass. She's not allowed to come inside- not without decking out in a full-body protective suit, anyway, and that takes ages, so instead they just talk on a phone, attached to the wall on either side. Precautions, and all that- he understands, or at least pretends he does.   
  
She gazes at him.  _"How are you?"_  she asks.  _"Holding up?"_  
  
"I'm doing okay," he says.  
  
 _"Maybe I can work something out,"_  Sherry hesitates,  _"so Chris could visit."_  
  
"Sherry," Piers says, all soft and quiet and sad.   
  
She knows what he wants to say. It's the same thing he said to her before, in that familiar coffee shop, eyes blurring and voice cracking.   
  
 _I used to watch out for him, but-  
  
I can't-  
  
I'm afraid to._  
  
 _"One visit,"_  Sherry says.  _"It'll only take a phone call."_  
  
But Piers goes stiff, muscles tensing, and hangs up the phone.   
  
\---------------------------  
  
 _Days Until the Game: 5_  
  
Claire cleans his apartment, does his laundry, cooks his meals. The windows are washed. The carpet is finally vacuumed properly. The countertops are shiny.   
  
"Don't get used to this or anything," she teases him, setting down a big plate of spaghetti in front of him and spooning sauce on afterwards. "I'm your sister, not your housekeeper."  
  
He doesn't say thank you but she knows he's grateful, and she doesn't need praise anyway.   
  
She sees his mitt lying in a corner while she's finishing tidying the living room.   
  
"You wanna have a catch?" she asks, all good intentions and smiles.   
  
Her smile fades when he flinches.   
  
"Nah," he says, hunching up his shoulders, turning away. "I don't think so."  
  
\---------------------------  
  
The injection doesn't hurt, not really. He's been pricked by too many needles already for it to sting.   
  
 _"We'll be back in about an hour,"_  says one of the nurses, her voice ringing strangely in his ears as she straps him into a chair. It's the usual procedure, tying him down every time they shoot him up with something. So he won't wreck anything if it goes south, probably. Always prepared for the worst- that's the B.S.A.A.  _"You know what to do if you need anything, or if something happens. If you feel strange-"_  
  
"Just yell," he says. "Yeah, I know."  
  
The door snaps shut sharply. And he's alone, again, the artificial light drilling into his eyes, and his thoughts turning, once again, to Chris.   
  
Piers wonders what his old Captain's doing  _(drinking?),_  thinking  _(about him?)_. Yes, he supposes, to the first part, at least- and no to the second, even though he wishes-  _god damn it, no- where did that even come from?_    
  
It's what feels like hours later and there's still no sign of the nurse. Piers' head hurts. His body feels white-hot. He thinks maybe he'll faint.   
  
He thinks about calling for help. He thinks about what was in the injection that they gave him. He thinks of Chris, again.  
  
Stupid. To even put Chris in his mind. Stupid, for Chris to try to stop him, save him, hold him. Stupid, like their entire screwed-to-hell relationship.  
  
 _"Love"_  is a stupid word, Piers thinks, so no wonder it seems to fit.    
  
He does end up fainting, in the end, and the nurses find him like that, passed out and hardly breathing.  
  
\---------------------------  
  
 _Days Until the Game: 4_  
  
"Let's do something," Claire says. "Let's have fun. As your little sister, it's my obligation to inform you that you're wasting away."  
  
Chris doesn't look at her. "We're going to a game," he says.   
  
"Not today," she reminds him. "Let's do something  _today._  Anything. We don't even have to go out."  
  
She looks around the apartment.   
  
"COD," she says, spotting the Xbox. "C'mon, I'll kick your ass."  
  
Piers used to play COD with him- or watch him play COD, due to the whole one-arm thing- but he'd never really minded.  _You sure this is fun for you?_  Chris had asked, glancing over at the sniper.  _Just watchin' me?_  And Piers had said  _yeah,_  in this voice- this soft, content voice that made Chris feel like he'd done something really great, even though he was only sitting there with a remote, staring at a screen, with Piers sitting next to him just watching.   
  
Claire knows something's up by the look on his face but she doesn't wait for an answer this time. Instead she tosses him a remote and clicks on the T.V., crashing onto the sofa next to him.   
  
"You're going down," she grins, nudging him in the side, and she looks so damn happy to be here, of all places, playing video games with her big brother, that Chris finally musters up the strength for a banter.   
  
"Yeah, I don't think so."  
  
"You're just sayin' that 'cause you're scared."  
  
"Scared? Of you, Claire? Definitely not."  
  
"Ooh, you should be. I'm gonna beat you so bad that you're not even gonna feel worthy of the Redfield name."  
  
"Like to see you try."  
  
She laughs, hits start, and hell yes she tries. Beats the shit out of him, too.   
  
When his cell-phone rings he doesn't pick it up the first time, enveloped in the game and feeling good for the first time in weeks with Claire shouting at the screen and pumping her fist in the air every time she gets a double-kill. But after the first call comes another one, and one after that, and the forth time his cell rings Claire pauses the game and chucks it over to him.   
  
"Answer that," she tells him, "or I'm gonna throw it against the wall."  
  
He picks it up without looking at the number, assuming that it's Jake.  
  
It's not.  
  
 _"Chris!"_  
  
"S...Sherry?"  
  
 _"Thank god you picked up. I need you, here, now."_  
  
Dread builds in the bottom of his stomach. "What?"  
  
 _"It's Piers,"_  she says, and Chris jumps to his feet.  
  
"Address. Give it to me. Now."  
  
She does, and he snaps his phone shut, tosses it on the couch, turns off the T.V. Claire stares at him in confusion.   
  
"Chris?"  
  
"I have to go," he says. "I'm sorry, I can't, I just-"  
  
She stops him, holding up a hand, getting to her feet. "I'm going with you."  
  
"Claire-"  
  
"Whatever this is," she says, "I'm sticking with you. You're not getting rid of me now, Chris."  
  
There's no stopping her. He knows that look, that tone. They're alike- both so stubborn, so steadfast, ridiculously loyal. And so he lets her push past him, snagging his keys on her way out to the truck.  
  
If there's one thing that makes him proud to be a Redfield, he thinks, it's her.   
  
\---------------------------  
  
Piers lies on the cot, still strapped down, eyes shut. They've got him hooked up to a monitor, recording his hearbeat, and some IV bags. At first they told him it was for testing. Then they fessed up.   
  
 _Your vitals are shutting down._    
  
That's what they told him. It's weird. It's confusing. He can't think it through, can't wrap his mind around the concept. He feels strange- his body is so light. Like there's nothing inside of him. His heart beats slow and lazy, the pulse pounding thickly in his skull. The stump of his right arm throbs sluggishly. He swears he can hear the blood trickling through his veins.   
  
Weird, confusing, strange. Maybe that's what it feels like to die. Maybe that's why he didn't die back in China. Because it wasn't strange enough. Piers thinks that makes sense.   
  
"Where's Sherry?" he asks one of the nurses who comes in to change out an IV bag, but she shakes her head, pressing her lips together, and leaves without answering.  
  
Time floats by on a tidal wave. Like the waves and currents that pushed him up to the surface from the facility. Nurses come and go, some of them speaking softly, others not speaking at all. They don't lie to him, which is nice. They tell him that he has at least twenty-four hours before his heart gives out. They ask him if it hurts, then inject him with another needle when he answers yes.  
  
It doesn't hurt so bad after that.   
  
They tell him other things, too. They tell him they're working on a solution. That there's hope.  
  
"How much?" he asks.   
  
"Get some rest," they answer.   
  
And so that's what he's trying to do, lying on the cot, still strapped down, eyes shut. And maybe he would've drifted off, if he hadn't heard him come in.   
  
The door is creaky and he hears it every time it opens. The nurses' footsteps are light, careful, quiet, and he can usual distinguish between them if he listens hard enough- but these footseps are different: they're loud, loud enough to echo, and the owner walks quickly- then pauses, then falters, then stops.  
  
"Piers."  
  
Unbelieving, breathless...tired.   
  
 _It's Chris._  He knows it's Chris, with that one word, with just his name, and he knows, even if he's shot up with all painkillers and needles.  
  
"Chris?" Piers raises his head and the room spins and  _yes, it's him,_  and he thinks he probably could cry, if he wasn't so drugged up- he'd cry, right here in front of him, and wouldn't give a shit, because Chris is here-  _here,_  and it's okay, it's okay, it's okay.  
  
"Are you dying?" Chris's voice is hoarse.  
  
"It's okay," says Piers. "They gave me some stuff. It doesn't hurt."  
  
Chris moves forward and then he's at the edge of the cot, grabbing a chair, clutching Piers' hand, still tied down. "No, no, no- Jesus, what'd they do to you?"  
  
Piers' fingers grasp weakly at his. "It's okay," he tells Chris. "It's okay."  
  
"I'll kill them-"  
  
"No, Chris- it's okay."  
  
There's a pause, and then Piers sighs, and closes his eyes again. "I'm sorry," he hears Chris breathe. "God, I'm sorry, Piers."  
  
Chris is crying now and Piers knows it because of the tremors in his voice. He opens his eyes and the tears drip off of Chris's nose and land on the blankets on the cot.   
  
"Oh," says Piers, dismayed. "Don't. It's okay. I love you."  
  
Chris freezes. Looks at Piers, brown eyes caught on hazel ones. "What?" he asks, the word catching in the back of his throat.  
  
Piers smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes, and he's sad and so doped up that he's not even sure how much Chris can understand. "Aren't you tired?" he says. "Aren't you tired, Chris?"  
  
Chris begins to speak, then chokes and shuts his mouth and swallows. More tears spatter onto the blankets. "Yeah," he says roughly. "I've been tired for a real long time."  
  
The sniper smiles wider and this time it's genuine. "Hey, Chris," he says.   
  
"Hey," Chris answers thickly, stroking Piers' hair, fingers trembling.  
  
"My iPod's on the table," Piers says. "Play a song?"  
  
 _Springsteen._  He doesn't have to tell Chris for Chris to know. "Which one?" Chris asks, wiping his eyes quickly, picking up the iPod. "You want your favorite?"  _If I Should Fall Behind_  is Piers' ringtone, his alarm, his favorite.  
  
"No," says Piers. "I want  _your_  favorite."  
  
So Chris plays it.   
  
"Blood brothers," Piers says automatically, almost as soon as it starts playing. "Oh, good. I like this one, Chris."  
  
They'd listened to it in the truck once. And it'd stuck with Chris, clung to him, until he'd finally gone and looked the damn thing up, listened to it on repeat, read the lyrics.   
  
 _The hardness of this world slowly grinds your dreams away._  
  
Piers knows all the words.   
  
 _Makin' a fool's joke out of the promises we made._  
  
He knows the words to every Springsteen song he's ever played. Chris's throat lumps up again.   
  
 _We stood side-by-side, each one fighting for the other. We said until we died-_  
  
Piers squeezes Chris's hand and Chris squeezes back. And then Piers closes his eyes again and they just sit there, holding hands, and Piers waits to die.   
  
 _We'd always be blood brothers._


	15. 15: The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris deals with the after-effects of losing Piers a second time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M DONE.
> 
> THIS IS IT I'M DONE AND I'M SO HAPPY THIS IS LEGITIMATELY THE 1ST FIC LONGER THAN 5 PIECES THAT I'VE COMPLETED.
> 
> Actually there's an epilogue coming so don't get bummed out just yet. I thought I'd stick a little something at the very end for ya'll. 
> 
> See all my thank-you's at the bottom :)

_Days Until the Game: 4_  
  
Chris doesn't stay.   
  
How could he, with the monitor recording every faltering heartbeat and the nurses gathered up by the door watching them and Piers' fingers clutching at Chris's hand, telling him  _it's okay, it's okay, it's okay-_  
  
Someone stronger would've stayed. Would've held his hand until the light went out of his eyes and the monitor flatlined. Piers would've stayed, if it had been the other way around.   
  
Chris isn't Piers. And when Piers drifts off, closes his eyes and succumbs to sleep, Chris gets up and leaves.   
  
Sherry ducks her head, shies away when Chris walks towards her. But Chris pauses and stops a few feet away, looking her straight in the eyes.  
  
"Thank you," he croaks.  
  
She looks surprised, then alarmed, panicked. Like he's supposed to yell- or hit her, or...something. Like she wants him to yell- like it'd be better that way.  
  
"Why?" she blurts, then- "you aren't...angry?"  
  
He pulls her into a tight embrace, squeezing his eyes shut. "God," he says. "I'm too- I'm too tired, Sherry. And you...did your best, I know you did. Your reasons- Jill and Leon's reasons- I know they were good-"  
  
Sherry's voice breaks along with her resolve. "I wanted to help," she says. "I was only trying to help, Chris-"  
  
"I know."  
  
"And Jill, and Leon- they were just doing their job, and they just wanted what was best for you-"  
  
"I know, Sherry-"  
  
"I'm so, so sorry."  
  
Sherry cries into his shirt but Chris seems to be out of tears, or out of strength to find them.   
  
Claire takes his arm and helps him to the car when they make it out the door. And she makes sure he's settled in the passenger's seat, because there's no way she's letting him drive like this.   
  
They don't talk. Claire knows her brother and knows that he's on the brink of collapse and doesn't want to take the chance of pushing him off. Instead she just drives: no conversation, no radio. It's better that way.   
  
He falls asleep during the short car ride home, and she has to shake him a few times to get him back into the conscious world. "You okay?" she asks, arm around his shoulders as he slides out of the truck, and he doesn't answer and she doesn't push, never pushes, just helps him to the front door and up the stairs and into the apartment.   
  
She helps him take off his shoes, because his hands are shaking so bad. And then she helps him take off his jacket, because he can't seem to work it off of his shoulders. And then she hugs him and rubs his back and tells him to go to bed, and he does, drifting towards his room, staggering slightly and using the wall for support- he's like a zombie, like one of the freak things she's killed, and she drinks two of the beers in his fridge to try and rid the thought from her mind.   
  
Chris's cellphone rings, rings, keeps ringing.  _Leon. Jill. Jake. Sherry._  Claire narrows her eyes at the phone- her brother doesn't need any sympathy calls, not now, for god's sake, not an hour after leaving the fucking lab- and she finally gets so pissed, listening to that constant ringing, that she turns the damn thing off, chucks it under the couch, hopes it stays there and that Chris doesn't find it for weeks.    
  
She'd watched from the window of the room they'd kept Chris's soldier in. And she'd seen the subtle touches of their hands linked together, Chris's fingers in the sniper's hair and the smile on the sniper's face, the way Chris bent over his body like he was already dead, already gone.  
  
The fact that she recognized the soldier was even worse- he was the one Chris had talked about, the rookie he'd recruited back in 2010. The one who'd called her when Chris hadn't-  _Ms. Redfield? Piers Nivans. Yes, I- I'm calling about your brother, my Captain- he's alive, he's fine, yeah-_  
  
Chris was a good guy. A nice guy. The best brother- even if he never answered her calls, never bothered to contact her, even when she thought he'd been dead for six months. But he'd needed someone to carry the burdens he couldn't, and Piers had.   
  
She's not sure if she can do it- carry Chris, now that Piers is gone. The thought makes her sad. But she folds herself into a comfortable position on the couch and tries to get some rest, because Dad used to say that everything always looks better in the morning.   
  
\---------------------------  
  
 _Days Until the Game: 3_  
  
In the morning Piers is still gone.   
  
And Chris is still quiet.   
  
Claire strokes her brother's hair when he staggers towards her, resting his cheek on her shoulder, and wishes that she could at least say something to make it better.   
  
Saying  _it's okay_  doesn't change a fucking thing.  
  
\---------------------------  
  
 _Days Until the Game: 2_  
  
He spends most of the day sleeping.  
  
When he wakes up he slides Piers' old iPod into his speakers and puts it on shuffle while he studies the ceiling. When it runs out of battery and he nearly breaks it throwing it across the room in a stupid, childish fit.   
  
He can't seem to remember Piers' voice and he panics, trying to find his phone, because he just wants to hear the words  _hey, it’s me. Call again another time or leave a message, I’ll try and get back to you-_    
  
He can't find his phone, and Claire shrugs when he asks her if she's seen it.  
  
He goes back to sleep.  
  
\---------------------------  
  
 _Days Until the Game: 1_  
  
Piers' army boots- the ones he liked to polish but never wore- are still by the door. There's a grocery list the sniper had written out for the two of them still lying on the counter. They'd managed to get the bed a new frame before he'd taken off but Chris never bothered to change the sheets and they still smell like him.     
  
Chris wraps himself up in those sheets and looks at the tickets and feels like dying.   
  
He doesn't.  
  
\---------------------------  
  
 _Days Until the Game: 0_  
  
He only goes because Claire asks him to.   
  
He listens to the ref call the pitches, watches the batter on deck warm up in the batter box, hears the crowd cheer when an outfielder snags a solid hit right out of the air.   
  
It's the outfielders that matter, he thinks, when it all comes down to it. If you've got a weak back-up you can't possibly hold the bases. If the bases are loaded and the ball crashes through your shortstop and your outfielders suck then you've gone and pissed away the entire game.   
  
Piers would've made a great outfielder. If he hadn't been BSAA and he'd had a normal life with two arms instead of one and a baseball glove instead of a sniper rifle then yeah, he would've made a great outfielder. He'd have the team's back like he'd always had Chris's. He'd hold the bases like he held the line. He'd make the right sacrifices at the right time. The way he had for Chris.   
  
God damn it, Chris hates him sometimes. For being so fucking loyal. No one in their right mind hurts themselves for the other guy. Normal people are selfish, take what they can get- take what they  _want,_  or what they  _love-_  
  
He's gripping the side of the seat too hard and Claire puts a hand on his arm, relieving the tension building there.   
  
"Hey," she says. "Why don't you go grab a hot dog?"  
  
She hands him five bucks and he takes it and gets up silently. No  _I owe you one,_  no  _thank you-_  she doesn't need any of that. She just needs him to get a hot dog. Keeping him together, as good as she can but not as good as someone else had.  
  
He stands in line with the money but when he gets up to the front he doesn't remember what he's there for or how long he's been waiting and so he hands the money to the guys behind him and steps out towards the balcony, where he can see the entire field. It reeks of summer, of girls in tank-tops and kids screwing around while their parents converse, sipping idly at Cokes, and the normality of it all makes Chris sick, makes him want to vomit or something, makes him want to grab his gun and charge into hell, to turn to Piers and say, "Jesus, this world is fucked."  
  
"Yeah," says Piers, "I know."   
  
Chris startles so fucking bad that he nearly trips over himself, pressing his back to the railing, cussing so loud that the parents drinking Coke turn to glare at him.  
  
"Fuck," he says. "Holy  _fuck,_  Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell-"  
  
It's Piers, but it's not. Piers isn't alive. Not even this one- clutching a cane in one hand, his skin paler than Chris has ever seen it.  
  
"Jesus," says Chris, sighing, calming down a little, getting a grasp on his reality. It's been a while since he's had a hallucination- since Edonia, when he got everyone killed, got shitfaced, and then had a bloody Finn following him around for week, messing with his drunken mind. "You're dead," he tells Piers, who is Not-Piers. He knows it's true.    
  
"Right," says Not-Piers, sarcastic. "Because you would know- the guy who didn't stick around."  
  
Chris looks around, wishing he had something strong to drink. His mouth is dry. "For god's sake. What was I supposed to do, watch you die?"  
  
"Sure," agrees Not-Piers. "Would've been okay with me."  
  
He's not real but Chris feels his throat begin to close up anyway. "My fault," he says. "It was my fault, like before."  
  
The hallucination looks at him but says nothing.   
  
"I break everything I touch," Chris says. "Fuck. I thought maybe it would stop when I quit the BSAA. But it's a fucking curse, you know? I'm sorry it had to be you, to find me."  
  
Not-Piers frowns. "Hey," he says. "I'm not here for a pity-party, Chris."  
  
But Chris doesn't stop talking because he's not real, so it doesn't really matter. "You deserved a whole lot better. A better Captain, a better- better...whatever the hell we were, I dunno. I failed you, over and over and over-"  
  
"Damn it," the hallucination snaps, pissed. "Would you shut up for a minute?"   
  
He sounds so much like the sniper that Chris actually obeys.   
  
"I went to your apartment first," says Not-Piers. "And when you weren't there I figured maybe you were at the bar. This was my last guess. Never took you for the sentimental type, Chris."  
  
He leans against the railing, his elbow nudging against Chris's arm, and Chris flinches. It's a terryfingly real visage and Chris wonders if he's been drinking, even if he doesn't remember getting a beer.   
  
"I also never took you for the type of guy to leave a dying patient's bedside."  
  
Chris twitches the corner of his mouth. "Told you," he mutters. "Told you I fai-"  
  
"Shut up," says Not-Piers again, but it's softer this time. "When I woke up I thought I was in hell. Turns out hell is a bit worse than Chicago or the United States, even with all the bioterrorism. And maybe I can give you some details if you quit jumping a foot in the air every time I touch you."  
  
Chris looks away. "Jesus," he says. "You're more stubborn than my last hallucination."  
  
Not-Piers' jaw tightens. "Chris-"  
  
"I'm just-" interrupts Chris. "Hell, I'm just sorry. And tired- god, you were right, I'm so tired-"  
  
"Chris-"  
  
"You were a good soldier. You were a good fr-"  
  
"God help me, if you say  _friend,_  Chris-"  
  
"Sorry," Chris repeats, broken, "I'm sorry," and Not-Piers closes his eyes, just for a second.   
  
"Okay," he says. "That's it. Quit talking to me like I'm-"  
  
"Not real," Chris finishes, looking away again, unable to hold his gaze for too long. "You're not."  
  
The hallucination draws its brows together, voice sharp. "And why not?"  
  
Chris stares out into the field. "Well," he says, and his voice fails him for a moment. "Probably...because I want you...to be."  
  
There's a pause. The crack of a bat, the erruption of cheering from the stands.  
  
"Damn it, Chris," says Piers.  
  
And then he's kissing him, his fingers digging into Chris's shirt, his cane clattering to the ground, and Chris stands there, shell-shocked.   
  
Something kicks in a few moments later.   
  
And he's got his arms around Piers' waist, lifting him at least three inches off the ground, not minding very much that they are in a very public place and not minding the way Piers' mouth curves up against his, either, feeling a giant tidal wave of relief crashing over him, wrapping him up, burning underneath his eyelids and filling in the empty pit in his stomach. He kisses back and doesn't give a shit when people start to turn and stare.   
  
"Woah," says Piers when Chris finally sets him down. "You miss me much?"  
  
Chris wants to hit him or grab onto him and never let go but he doesn't do either. He just breathes out, and picks up the cane off of the ground and puts it in Piers' hand. And he thinks about saying all of the things that he'd wished he'd said before- things like  _not like this_  or  _not again_  or  _I can't breathe, Piers._  
  
"Wanna get a hot dog?" he asks instead, voice rough.  
  
Piers must hear all those other things underneath his question because he looks at Chris and shakes his head a little. "Listen, you should know how-"  
  
"Don't explain," says Chris, "Not right now, not here. I just want- I would really like for you to- to just...get a hot dog. With me."  
  
"If that's an order," says Piers, "then yes, sir," flashing  _that_  smile, all teeth and no modesty, the one that Chris knows so well, and Chris rummages around for a few crumpled one-dollar bills in his pocket and they go back up to the hot dog stand and they get a hot dog and share it there, in the stadium, leaning against the railing and watching the batter bat and the pitcher pitch and the basemen slap their hands against their thighs and the outfielders stand in the outfield, adjusting their caps, knees bent, always there at the end of everything, making the sacrifices.  
  
"You woulda been a great outfielder," Chris tells Piers.   
  
"Thanks," says Piers, slightly puzzled, glancing up at him, brow puckered slightly. Chris knows he'll never be able to find the words to tell him why.    
  
The game ends, but neither of them remember who won.   
  
\---------------------------  
  
Chris does a good job holding it together until they get back.  
  
He finds Claire in the stands before they leave and introduces them properly, face-to-face, and it goes okay, despite the unbelieving look on his sister's face. After an awkward exchange in which Piers goes for a handshake and Claire refuses to shake and hugs him instead it gets a lot easier to ask Claire if she could possibly move her stuff out of their apartment- which she of course agrees to, her quick wink towards Chris embarrassingly obvious to the sniper standing beside him.   
  
They leave together, Claire insisting that Piers ride shotgun, and then Chris drops Piers off at the flat while Claire grabs her things. Chris drives her home and doesn't complain once when she turns the radio dial to her favorite country station. "Your cell is under the couch," she calls over her shoulder as she jumps out of the truck and jogs up her driveway. "You'd better call me!"   
  
He promises to, this time.   
  
By the time he drives back to his apartment the sun is down. Piers is sitting at the kitchen table when he walks in the door, and although he looks up he doesn't say anything as Chris hangs up his keys and kicks off his shoes.   
  
Chris stands there and swallows and looks at him.  
  
"Hey," says Piers.   
  
"Hey," says Chris.   
  
Yeah, he'd done a good job holding it together up until now.   
  
There's something in Chris's expression that makes Piers kick back the chair and scramble towards him. And when he's there in front of Chris the older man's legs give way, hitting the ground on his knees, the sniper's single hand grasping Chris's elbow before it slides around to the small of his back, pulling him close, mouth up against Chris's ear, murmuring soft comforts.   
  
Chris's body shakes against his, Chris's voice breaks and catches and stammers, Chris opens the floodgates and lets out everything, kneeling there in the entrance hall of his flat, and Piers takes it, one arm providing the stability that should have been two.   
  
"My fault," Chris gasps, unable to catch his breath, mopping his runny nose and his wet cheeks on his sleeve. "My fault, my fault-"  
  
"It wasn't," Piers hushes him. "Chris, it was never your fault."  
  
"M-my fault-"  
  
"Shh," Piers says. "Shh, Chris. It's okay."  
  
Chris sobs for the first time in years.   
  
And Piers kisses him, again, and again, and again.   
  
\---------------------------   
  
It had been Jill's idea, apparently, and Sherry who had put it into action.   
  
A strong, chemically-tampered-with adaption of Jake Muller's blood had been pumped into Piers. And instead of killing the virus, it had decided to kill anything within reach. Traveling through his bloodstream, flooding through his organs.  
  
It was a last-minute, far-stretched idea. But Jill had brought it up anyway- using Sherry's blood to offset Jake's and suppress the mutations.  
  
 _It won't work,_  Sherry had said, as the the blood had shot through a tube and into Piers.  
  
It had.   
  
 _You go, supergirl,_  Jake had said over the phone, throat tight, sitting in her bedroom missing her. He'd crossed his fingers when he'd asked if this meant that she would come home. He'd uncrossed them when she'd said yes.   
  
This time, when Piers had woken up, he'd known exactly where he was, and exactly who he wanted to see. But Chris, they'd told him, wasn't there.   
  
Oddly reminiscent enough, he'd thought, of the first time he'd woken up like this.  
  
They'd called his cell- Sherry, Jill- but he hadn't picked up. Leon tried to get ahold of him. Then Jake. But the rings always had given way to the answering machine, and they'd given up.   
  
Piers hadn't gotten angry, this time. It was hard to watch people die, and Chris was already unfairly experienced in that field. Piers wouldn't have wanted to stay by Chris's bed like that, even if he would've done it anyway. He couldn't blame Chris for much.   
  
He'd still been a little annoyed, though.   
  
And so he'd pushed to get better. He had eaten every meal they brought him even though he hadn't been positive that the food wouldn't come right back up again. He had asked Sherry for a cane and spent hours pacing the walls of his room, getting his weakened body used to walking again.  
  
By the time of the game, he'd been declared stable. Sherry had gotten someone in the lab to drive with him to find Chris. And when they had...  
  
Well. There'd been hot dogs and home runs all around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you, thank you to EVERYONE who ever left a comment on this. More than once, there were times when I felt like just ditching the fic in a fit of writer's angsty rage and running off to cuddle with my Xbox instead, but you guys were so fucking persistent- leaving comments reminding me that I hadn't updated in a while, asking if I was gonna finish because you needed to know the end- and that honestly kept me going.
> 
> I don't usually reply to comments on here- I do that on dA. And a lot of people take that in a negative light- like the "she doesn't care if people like her stuff because she doesn't reply" kind of way. But half the time I'm writing, I'm thinking about all the stuff you all have pointed out in your responses to previous chapters. And it also makes me grin really hard whenever I see that someone's left a comment. So thank you, I love you, you're beautiful. 
> 
> More specific thank-you's go to: 
> 
> ohhhhyoufromchinatoo for all the extremely long thoughtful comments. I absolutely love when people take the time to write out what they really think about my writing, and you were one of the readers that not only did that, but who also caught all the little details I put in. Like the part about Piers being "temporary"- I loved that line, and freaked out when you took notice. Do you even know how great it is to see someone go through every chapter to point out things- even taking specific lines from the story to highlight what they liked best? GAH. Honey, you're amazing. 
> 
> ReprobateRaconteur for poking me in the side when I gave up on the fic for a bit. It was great to have that reminder that people are waiting for me to update. And even though you didn't have an AO3 account you'd been the fic since the beginning, which makes me happy-dance around my room. Thanks, sweetie. <3
> 
> DontMurderTheWords had a fucking amazing critique. You gave me pros and cons of the story thus far- it made me reevaluate a lot of my thoughts for where the fic was going. I would actually go back and look at the critique after I wrote another chapter, then re-read the chapter and see if I could edit anything with your suggestions fresh in my mind. I really hope you've liked what I've posted since then! Thank you for being a great review buddy ;)
> 
> Stella, wildchild13 and Alhendra, you three were literally there from the start and continued to comment through pretty much every single chapter. Comments are a writer's best friend, and the positive feedback you guys gave me made me smile even when I was having some crappy days. Here is a big virtual hug for each of you. :)
> 
> Shayeara Wood fell into the fic a little late- and you apparently spent 2 hours reading every single one of my chapters, which is just straight-up flattering. Sorry for making you cry, honey, and thank you so much for taking the time to read! It means a lot. <3
> 
> Lastly, a comment from CloudPanties that basically sums up everything about Chris and Piers: "I just want to build a pillow-and-blanket fort and cuddle them all." I am sure that, somewhere in the far reaches of the lands of Fictional Character Universe, Chris and Piers are doing exactly that. 
> 
> \- Hobbit


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *sweats*
> 
> *laughs nervously*
> 
> anyone remember this fic????
> 
> and the epilogue i promised like a billion years ago hahha aa ha a a a
> 
> [I have a tumblr.](http://www.bygoneboy.tumblr.com)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because where else would it end, honestly?
> 
> Please listen to this. This was the song that inspired this entire story, it's so important to me. 
> 
> (Also if you haven't seen the movie, you totally should. Best 80's movie ever. Best baseball movie ever.)
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkVscx2KAjY

Months pass.

They fall into a steady rhythm—with friends, family, things they’ve never had. Claire visits, Leon calls— Jill apologizes…Chris accepts. 

There’s dinner with Sherry and Jake and beers with old BSAA partners. There’s ceremonies they’re invited to—and _sometimes_ attend—where they pin medals on Chris, give speeches for Piers. 

There’s a rhythm they have with each other, too. 

Chris helps Piers sort out the pills he’s been prescribed to and keeps track of the medication he’s on. Piers starts Chris back on the track to being alcohol-free—and it might be a bit of a long road for both of them, but they’re in it for the long haul, there’s no doubt about it.

It doesn’t surprise Chris, their rhythm, and how quickly they fall into it. It doesn’t surprise him that they still bicker, sometimes, and that Piers still has a temper that can be easily tested. It doesn’t surprise him that they fit so well together, and it doesn’t surprise him that the first time he says “I love you” is also the first time he doesn’t want to take it back. 

Because it’s easy, with Piers. 

And that’s what surprises him. That it’s _easy._

The routine they have, the words in his mouth…it’s easy and nothing has never been easy before, and so Chris is nervous— rightfully so. Nothing that’s easy—nothing this _good—_ ever really lasts, does it?

Not for them, not in his experience. 

It’s coming close to a year since the Wrigley game and Piers starts to notice the anxiety in Chris’s face, the shifty nervousness in his eyes. Chris notices that Piers notices and it just makes the anxiety, the nervousness, all the worse, because he’s stressed out that Piers is stressed out, and finally, one afternoon, when they wake up so late that morning’s already passed them by, Piers makes a decision. 

His good— and only— arm is draped over Chris’s torso as he huffs into his chest. “We’re gonna go out today,” he says. 

Chris’s fingers drift through his hair absentmindedly. “Huh,” Chris mumbles, sleepy. “Sherry n’ Jake got somethin’ planned?” 

“No.”

“Claire?”

“No,” Piers says, “it’s a surprise, it’s gonna be a surprise, so I can’t tell you, or it won’t be a surprise anymore, okay?” 

Chris is quiet for so long that Piers thinks he’s fallen asleep. When he hears the soft snore, he realizes he’s right. 

“C’mon, ya old fart.” He elbows Chris in the side and the bigger man jolts awake, startled. “Get up, we’re going _out.”_

Chris watches him as he gets dressed, working the sleep out of his eyes contentedly. “Movie theater,” he yawns, tossing out vague guesses. “Pizza Hut…baseball game.”

“If you keep asking, I’ll keep saying no.” He tugs a shirt on, clasps the buckle on his jeans, but when he turns, eyebrows raised, back to the bed, Chris hasn’t moved an inch. 

It takes a lot more sweet talking and promises to get him out of bed, even if it is past 1 PM. 

By the time they get in the pickup Chris has had three cups of coffee and officially declares himself awake. “What’s in the bag?” he asks, narrowing his eyes suspiciously as Piers tosses a duffle into the back. 

“Nothing,” Piers says cryptically, sliding into the passenger seat as Chris starts the engine. 

“Nothing?”

“Yup.”

“Looks pretty full.”

“Yeah,” Piers retorts, gaze shifting out the window, down at his shoes, back at Chris. “Full of _nothing.”_

Chris raises his eyebrows at him until he cracks a smile. 

“Where are we drivin’ to?” he asks. 

Piers shrugs. “I’ll tell you when to turn.” 

He guides Chris that way, with quiet mutters of _turn left, stay right, keep straight._

But Chris catches on pretty quick. 

“We’re going to the field,” he realizes. “Right?” 

Piers bites down on his lower lip to keep himself from grinning. “Keep driving.” 

“Killjoy,” Chris mutters, and Piers is grinning, now. 

“Wackjob,” he replies, and Chris pulls into the baseball field’s parking lot, dust floating up from the weed-covered ground as the truck tires crunch to a stop. 

Chris unbuckles and clambers out, stretching as he nudges the car door shut behind him. “C’mon,” Piers says, duffle bag strap already slung over his shoulder. “Let’s go.” 

The sun is warm but it’s not so late that the heat is unbearable. There’s a chill, just slightly, and dew is still scattered over the soft grass that yields underfoot as they make their way out to the diamond. Piers lowers his shoulder and slips the bag off, crouching to sort through it with his hand. 

“Here,” he says, and tosses a mitt to Chris, then a ball.

Chris catches both with ease, one after the other. “We’re playin catch, huh?” 

“We’re playin catch,” Piers replies, wiggling his fingers into the still too—big glove, hopping to his feet and jogging ten, fifteen feet back. “You ready?” 

“You know I am if you are.” 

He tosses, underhand, slow, and Piers catches it, wrist supported by his shoulder, clumsy but firm— then sends it back, bouncing over the ground, for Chris to scoop up again.

And they fall into it. It’s a pattern, baseball, it’s a rhythm— back and forth, like banter, almost, the thud as the ball hits the sweet spot of the mitt and the raspy scratch of dirt against the hide. It’s a rhythm and it’s easy, because after all, it’s teamwork, and they both know about teamwork, about watching out for the other guy while making sure you don’t keel over. 

They know about rhythm, about teamwork and the crazy way they work and the crazy way they’ve always worked, when Chris had looked at him and he’d looked at Chris and Chris had said, _you thinking what I’m thinking?_

“Hey,” says Chris, “what’s going on, in that head of yours?” 

Nothing, he would have said, once, when it was crazy how much it scared him, the lengths he’d go to keep Chris safe. 

“I’m thinking,” he says, instead. 

“Yeah?” Chris pauses, tossing the ball from his bare hand to his mitt. “About what?” 

Piers smiles. “Baseball,” he says, “and that we can do this again tomorrow, if you want.” 

And he sees Chris change, in a moment. Sees the creases in his forehead smooth out, the hard edges of his shoulders ease back. He smiles at Chris and he sees Chris realize, that it’s okay that it’s easy. 

That they’ll be okay, the two of them, in their crazy rhythm. 

Chris smiles back, soft. 

And he throws the ball.


End file.
